This column celebrates the vibrant literary culture and heritage of Dumaguete City, in anticipation of its bid to be designated as UNESCO City of Literature under the Creative Cities Network. It is produced by the Buglas Writers Guild, a network of literary artists from Negros Oriental, Negros Occidental, and Siquijor. Each week, we will focus on the work of one local writer. For this month, the guest editor is Dumaguete fictionist Ian Rosales Casocot.
Poets writing about the craft [or the life pursuing the craft] is nothing new, but there is something compelling—and also, sadly, foreboding—about this 1968 poem about being a “mid-career poet,” written by the Dumaguete writer Artemio Tadena. When he published this, he was still really at the beginning of prolific career as a published poet, also at the cusp of winning various national awards, and nine years before he would die:
Poet in Mid-Career
And wherever I go, there would also go
Spirals of roses, enameling of songs,
Birds on golden boughs—there, with them, is where I belong.
Angels and bell buoy weather, denominations and
Powers: these, too, to my triumph will be witnesses,
Not merely tides and cliffs — or pinioned land.
Circling now the spirals of the sun, he saw
That flight did not bring him any farther from his home:
Nor any graduate level from that which hovered into view:
Momentarily he hung — then
plum —
metted
into
the
foam: —
Content at last with what he scaled to bring
After repeated circling and circling:
His own self it was he wanted to,
But, alas, could never escape from.
Tadena was only 37 [on the eve of turning 38] when he died on 5 December 1977, just a day before his birthday on December 6. We could let this past week of December pass then without at least commemorating his memory.
A popular literature teacher at Foundation University, Boy [as he was called by friends and family] was serious about his poetry—he was a fellow at the Silliman University National Writers Workshop in 1969 and had trained, if briefly, under the Tiempos, and later he won three Palanca Awards for his efforts: second prize in 1969 for his collection Northward Into Noon, another second prize in 1972 for The Edge of the Wind, and finally first prize for Identities in 1974.
Three years after his last Palanca win, he would be dead. He was such a young man when he succumbed to a fateful cardiac arrest—and one might say, robbed of further attaining poetic heights that were well within his grasp. Today, almost no one remembers this singular poet from Dumaguete.
In 2016, two other poets—Myrna Peña-Reyes of Dumaguete and [soon to be National Artist for Literature] Gemino H. Abad of Manila and Cebu—would try to resurrect his name and poetry, and came up with an anthology of his poetry, This Craft, As With a Woman Loved: Selected Poems, published by the University of Sto. Tomas Publishing House.
From the biographical afterword of that book, Peña-Reyes writes: “We realized [in 2010, during a break in the Silliman Writers Workshop] that hardly anybody now knows the young Dumaguete poet of our generation whose outstanding work earned prestigious literary awards before his untimely death… Except for a few poems in some anthologies, his work is not available, all of his books having been out of print for decades.”
Together, Peña-Reyes and Abad set to gather Tadena’s poems from several collections, as well as take inventory of the ones in miscellaneous publications—mostly school papers and journals—housed at both the Foundation University Library and the Silliman University Library. Abad would edit and annotate the poems, and Peña-Reyes would endeavor to write a definitive biographical essay of the man.
Because of the book, we now know that Tadena’s mother, Eufrecina Maputi, was a Dumaguete native, and his father, Eugenio Tadena Sr., was an Ilocano who had settled in Dumaguete after finding work as a foreman in a road construction company in Negros Oriental. Eugenio’s first two wives died in childbirth; Eufrecina would become his third wife, and she would bear him three children, Artemio being the eldest. All in all, Eugenio would sire sixteen children with four wives.
We know that Tadena would matriculate at West Central School [now West City Elementary School], where he displayed an uncanny intellect even as a child, and a hankering for the arts. In 1951, for example, a watercolor painting of his earned worldwide recognition in an arts competition sponsored by UNICEF. He would later attend the high school at East Visayas School of Arts and Trade [or EVSAT, now the Negros Oriental State University]. He edited the school paper, and won prizes at various declamation and oratorical contests.
We know that he was a parttime college student at Silliman University, where he wasted no opportunity to publish his poems and essays in the two student publications—The Sillimanian and Sands & Coral, the prestigious literary folio of the university. The staff of The Sillimanian found him “strange,” “weird,” “aloof,” and “proud”—and he would sulk and go on a tantrum when his poems would not get published.
We now know that his first publication, in 1957, was with the Sands & Coral, with the poem “What is This Life We Lead and Lead?” And even then, his singular poetic style made him stand out. “I didn’t understand completely what [the poem] meant,” Peña-Reyes writes, “but instinctively, I recognized the voice of a genuine poet and became a fan.” She also recalls having serious conversations with him—“It was always serious, no bantering or frivolous talk, and I thought he took himself too seriously. He was brimming with ideas and information about poets and their work… No wonder he made people uncomfortable—he just had too much he wanted to share, and with such passion and earnestness.”
We know that he truly flourished at Foundation College [now Foundation University], where he eventually transferred. He was on the honor roll and edited the school paper, and when he graduated with an A.B. degree, he was recipient of the Presidential Pin award. Later, Foundation would hire him to teach English and literature. There, he would become a professor, chair of the dramatics guild, and adviser and editor of several campus publications. At the time of his death, he was head of Foundation’s English Department, as well as its Office of Publications and University Research.
We know that he married the Cebu writer and dancer Gemma Racoma in 1967, and had two boys, Ireland Luke and Adrian Gregory. The marriage did not last. Gemma would leave for a life abroad with their children, and Artemio returned to Dumaguete to live with his family.
We know that he published independently five books of poetry: aside from the aforementioned Palanca-winning collections, he would also come out with Poems (Volume One) in 1968 and The Bloodied Envelope in 1973. That last title won him first place in the Cultural Center of the Philippines Award for Poetry, also in 1973.
We finally know that he had just passed the Bar exam when he died—alone in his room, in the process of tying his shoes, ready to go to work.
Remembering his poetry, we know that he went where there will be “spirals of roses, enameling of songs / Birds on golden boughs—there, with them, is where I belong.”
