After character sketches come storyboards. Here’s a preview of the “Kalipay and the Tiniest Tiktik” storyboards in process, from Happy Garaje.
Cebuano
Over a year ago, I met Marlinda Angbetic Tan in Cebu. I had “met” her via email, intially, and whe was, sight unseen, incredibly warm and supportive of this Sari-Sari Storybooks venture. It was wonderful to meet her in person then.
Marlinda is a writer, and the former Lifestyle Editor of “The Freeman” (a Cebu City newspaper). Here she reads “Bomba,” a poem based on a bombing.
Working on this passion project is not without its stumbling blocks. I often say it feels like I’m making it up as I go along. But it also has a serendipity to it, an energy it generates on its own.
I came to Cebu City to record a voiceover for the ebook version of “Kalipay and the Tiniest Tiktik,” the Cebuano story in this series. (For those who aren’t Filipino, a tiktik is a creature from Philippine folklore—a funky sort of vampire, though “viscera-sucker” is more accurate.) I found an actor within 24 hours of landing here (the expressive Yon Maningo), via a fellow Brooklynite (playwright Linda Faigao-Hall).
Cebuano Poetry: Jeremiah Bondoc reads “sa menteryo sa carreta dihang nangutana ka og unsaon ang balak sa pagbasa”
Welcome to Poetry Wednesdays on the Sari-Sari Storybooks blog.
As I travel around the Philippines to work on this children’s book series, I’d like to share some of the poets I meet, writing in Cebuano, Waray, Meranao, Hiligaynon, Tagalog and other Philippine languages. I hope you’ll enjoy hearing the multiplicity of Filipino poetry in the world.
We’ll start with Cebuano poet Jeremiah Bondoc (president of Bathalad, a Cebuano poetry organization),who read this back in February 2014, on my last trip here. This is “sa menteryo sa carreta dihang nangutana ka / og unsaon ang balak sa pagbasa” (how a poem should be read you asked me/ at the carreta cemetery).
Check back in on Wednesdays to hear more poets.