Women's Month Reading List: Poetry Collections

Poetry has the power to charm any reader with just a few simple words. It can depict the minuscule moments of life, both heartwarming and heartrending. It can depict the complexities of external and internal worlds. Poetry is immensely versatile and profound when written by capable hands. This March, we spotlight the works of women poets who have greatly transformed and contributed to the genre in their own unique ways. 

College Boy: Poems

By Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta 

Girls in books have entire lives ahead of them.

As girls, they’re at their brightest.

Wifehood’s the endgame for those with no imagination.

• An excerpt from “Women in books”

Known for her subtlety and control when it comes to her poetry, Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta is the author of four poetry collections: The Proxy Eros (2008), Burning Houses (2013), Hush Harbor (2017), and Eros Redux (2019). She obtained an MFA from the New School University in 2004 and has since taught in major universities in Manila. Katigbak-Lacuesta has also coedited various literary Filipino poetry anthologies for Cordite Poetry Review and Vagabond Press. In 2019, she coedited The Achieve of, The Mastery: Filipino Poetry and Verse from English, mid-’90s to 2016 with Dr. Gemino Abad. She’s been awarded multiple times for her work, including the 2014 Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Poetry and the 2007 Philippines Free Press Award for Poetry. 

College Boy rages about the small assaults and transgressions that take place in the everyday spaces of the playground, the parking lot, the workplace, and the route home. The poet bites back against these acts, armed with pretty words and clever turns of phrase. With keen observation and bravery, the poet exposes the true brutality of toxic masculinity and how it is built across generations. If you want poetry that doesn’t mince its words, look no further; this collection unabashedly showcases the truths of living in a patriarchal society. 

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Moving with Moonrise: Haibuns 

By Ma. Milagros T. Dumdum

In the afternoons, I always drive westward where 

I could watch the setting sun moving with me, as if in a 

dance, both of us home-bound.

The descending sun—

The world waiting for beauty

Mothers calling home

• Haibun 26

Ma. Milagros T. Dumdum works as a financial advisor. She has published two poetry (haiku) collections, Falling on Quiet Water and The Feel of Light Rain, and collaborated with her husband Simeon Dumdum Jr. on a renga, The Sigh of a Hundred Leaves. When she’s not writing poems, she indulges in flower gardening and iPhone photography.

Moving with Moonrise finds beauty in the mundane: in the fall of a singular leaf, in the setting golden sun, in the slow wilting of flowers. In this collection of haibuns, a poetic form that combines the haiku with prose, we journey with Dumdum through life’s boundless joys and inevitable aches. We learn of her childhood in Ormoc, her tender relationship with her mother, her adventures with her husband, and countless other moments suffused with deep and heartfelt reflection. If you’re ever feeling the weight of the day heavy on your shoulders, this poetry collection will surely lift your spirits and urge you to wait for whatever gift this world might bring you next.

Get your copy in paperback: Website | Shopee and Lazada