Writing Pangasinan literature urged
LINGAYEN—Isulat yo ed Pangasinan.
This was the encouragement given the budding literary writers in the province by prominent local writers in a workshop last July 28.
The workshop was aimed at a wider use of the local language as their medium to expand Pangasinan’s body of literature.
Poet and PUNCH columnist Santiago Villafania, who writes in several languages including Pangasinan, said the Pangasinan language lacks a large body of literature compared to other local languages.
“Critics in writers’ workshops in Manila and the Cordilleras are always asking why there are very few pieces of literature written in the language,” said Villafania, an ASNA Award Winner for Literature.
Meanwhile, author and lawyer Ferdinand Quinto noted that Pangasinan literature has long been in a hiatus.
Villafania and Quinto, along with Sergio Bumadilla, editor-in-chief of Balon Silew, a quarterly magazine in the local language, served as the panelists during the first Pangasinan Writers’ Workshop held at the Capitol Resort Hotel here.
Attending the workshop were 20 writers who participated in the First Pangasinan Literary Contest dubbed Kurit Panlunggaring last April.
Non-winning entries using the local language in the literary contest were critiqued.
After the forum, the attendees organized themselves as a group, which they voted to be called Kapi-Tuway, derived from kapitolyo and tuyaw, which mean capitol and meeting, respectively.
Ma. Luisa Elduayan, head of the provincial tourism office that organizer the event, promised to name after the group a shed along the Lingayen Gulf adjacent to the Capitol. (PIA-Pangasinan/ARF)
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