Savage Mind, ADNU Press to honor Poet Bentoy Manlagnit

Gualberto Cea Manlagnit, lyricist of the song “Sa Baybayon nin Sisiran” and a true lover of the Bikol language and culture will be honored on July 20, 2019 at Peninsula Café at 6:00 o’clock in the evening. The event is jointly co-sponsored by the Manlagnit family, the Savage Mind Bookshop and the Ateneo de Naga University Press which published Manlangit’s selected poetry, stories and visual artworks in 2015. The said book co-edited by Kristian Sendon Cordero, Tito Genova Valiente and Atty. Celestina Manlagnit-Tam was nominated as one of the Best Book for a Literary Anthology in the prestigious National Book Awards from the Manila Critics Circle and the National Book Development Board.

In his art review that appeared in the Business Mirror, critic Tito Valiente writes: “Born on July 28, 1938, Manlagnit passed away on May 16, giving us artworks that bear no titles. In a sense, the artist has given us what he treasured most as an activist: freedom. We are now free, tremblingly perhaps, to confront the vision, these commodities of aesthetics and name them. There are two works that he left and they need no labels. One is in monochrome green, save for a yellow where the pistil should be. The petals are green but that is not the unusual thing about this work. It is the seed, a bean, at the side of the flower/plant. The result is both witty and mystical as the artist illustrates without drama the story of growth.”

Among the writers and cultural workers attending the said event include Tito Valiente, Frank Peñones Jr. Jerome Hipolito, Dr. Maryjane Guazon-Uy, Dr. Sonny Sendon. Federico Jose Lagdameo, Delia Enverga Volante, Jesus Volante and Fr. Wilmer Tria.