[Hot Off the Press] Songs from Manunggul

New poetry collection from the Ateneo Press Songs from Manunggul boldly traverses literal and literary boundaries 

“How to be still when the heart keeps yearning?” Songs from the Manunggul, a new poetry collection from the Ateneo University Press, journeys from the past to the present, from the Philippines and beyond, and from this life to the next—following the lives of four characters from one extended family in their search for home. 

Each character is in a constant state of physical and emotional movement. A retiree sends money from the United States to build a boat honoring her dead parents. A nurse in Saudi Arabia dreams of the river in her town. A construction worker in Japan regards snow for the first time. A gay man in Canada mourns a lover’s death. The text ebbs and flows across the pages—fluid with the boundaries of form—thus echoing the fluidity of boundaries between time and space and between life and death. Every line is a snapshot into a life in the diaspora—images of longing for what was left behind and what was lost, of resolve amid dire realities, of awe in the face of the unfamiliar. 

“Home is a river flowing.” By piecing together these scattered lives, the book conceives an allegory where the place of origin is conjoined with the point of destination. The earth is the residence of the dispersed; home is borne by memories. This is poetry as a fable for our diasporic times. Songs from Manunggul is perfect for those interested in immersive and experimental poetry, the kind that is unexpected but all the more riveting for it. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born in Aklan, Charlie Samuya Veric is the author of four other poetry collections: Histories, Boyhood, The Love of a Certain Age, and No Country. A former fellow of the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study and the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study, he holds a doctorate from Yale and teaches at the Ateneo de Manila. Songs from Manunggul is his fifth book of poems.

Songs from Manunggul by Charlie Samuya Veric is published by the Ateneo de Manila University Press under the Bughaw imprint. The book retails at PHP 975 and is available at the Ateneo University Press Bookshop in Bellarmine Hall, and the Press’s official Lazada and Shopee stores.

Grab your copy in paperback: website | Lazada | Shopee