[Hot Off the Press] Amigo Warfare

New Poetry Collection from the Ateneo Press Amigo Warfare battles despair with unrelenting hope

In a world filled with tragedies, how do you preserve hope? The Philippine edition of Amigo Warfare by Eric Gamalinda has been newly released by the Ateneo University Press. Armed with more heartrending poems, this book is a pilgrimage across past and present Philippines, a pilgrimage still infused with unrelenting hope. 

Patrick Rosal, author of The Last Thing: New and Selected Poems, praises each profoundly crafted poem: “I don’t think Eric would call what we draw from his books “wisdom,” but they doubtlessly have the qualities of wisdom: precision, grace, bewilderment. I mean to say, too, that the poems take their own awe for granted—which seems to be the source of their power, a model of seeing in which the extraordinary really is a ubiquitous phenomenon, a revelation of a cosmos.” 

Gamalinda does not fear speaking of the raw and biting despair in the aftermath of corruption and injustice as he alludes to the colonial periods and the martial law era.  Eugene Gloria, author of Sightseet in This Killing City, says: “Amigo Warfare sings of our broken world. Call them songs of despair, call them blessings and incantations: ‘Your heart / as mortal as a bird. / And when you speak / your voice forms a nest of trebuchets around you” as he sings in his poem called “Plan B.’ Eric Gamalinda’s poems will break your heart, but they will leave you wanting to come back for more.”

In the titular poem are the lines: “Because you brand our tongues/with silence./Because you watch us/in fear, even while we sing.” This collection calls for readers to join its song and take part in the telling of our dark and troubling histories. Amigo Warfare shows us the allure of hopelessness so that we may continuously resist it. 

About the Author

Born and raised in Manila, Eric Gamalinda first published in the Philippines four novels: Planet Waves, Confessions of a Volcano, Empire of Memory, and My Sad Republic; a short story collection, Peripheral Vision; and a collection of poems, Lyrics from a Dead Language. All were written and published in the last decade of the twentieth century to literary acclaim and recognized with National Book Awards and the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards many times over, on top of his nonfiction and plays. His fifth novel, The Descartes Highlands, was shortlisted for the Man Asian Prize. His other US publications include the poetry collection Zero Gravity, winner of the Asian American Literary Prize; a short story collection, People Are Strange; and an early version of this book.

Amigo Warfare is published by the Ateneo de Manila University Press under the Bughaw imprint. The book retails at PHP 695 and is available at the Ateneo University Press Bookshop in Bellarmine Hall, and the Press’s official Lazada and Shopee stores.

Get your copy in paperback: website │Lazada│Shopee