Please tell us about the making of “Langit ang buhay.”
Outside my writing attic is a small balcony, with wood palings ranged all around, and I noticed a hole from which a nail had fallen out. So in I go, into the hole, towards the poem.
This poem forms part of a series that responds to Filipino idiomatic expressions. There are many of these. It will probably take me forever.
Elizabeth Onusko Cafferkey asks Five Questions of Ivy Alvarez, for Foundry.
In her review for The Australian, Rachel Edwards writes:
This book includes some of the strongest and most interesting poets in the region today, including Michelle Cahill, David Stavanger, John Tranter and Ivy Alvarez. Juan Garrido-Salgado was a political prisoner in Chile and Anna Couani’s grandparents were refugees from Poland.
In the introduction, the editors refer to the cultural amnesia of Australians that has been “functionally and assiduously underwritten by right-wing thinking”. Hannah Arendt is mentioned, too: sadly, her work is becoming more relevant once again. These are poems about the cruelty towards people seeking safety on our shores. It is a book that will mark our times.
Ivy Alvarez’s poem, ‘Langit ang buhay’, features in the second issue of Foundry.
Zoetic Press nominates Ivy Alvarez’s poems, “Extract of Brown” and “Extract of Red”, for the Pushcart Prize.
Her two poems first appeared in A Study in Scarlet.
Ivy Alvarez’s poem, Two-headed lamb, is forthcoming in Tincture Journal #16.