PRAU BEGETS ... WAVES ... !

For New Mystics, Joey Madia reviews PRAU by Jean Vengua; here's an excerpt:

Vengua’s Prau is a fascinating journey in the often stormy seas of nontraditional poetry. It takes as its overarching theme images of boats and boating, bracketing its interior selection of poems with a beginning quote by Herman Melville and an ending quote from The Dhammapada. The quotes served, for me, a navigational purpose, functioning as the start and end points on a map or as the buoys that mark a channel or inlet, calling to mind the mnemonic device of “Red, Right, Return” that I learned as a teenager living near the ocean and learning to sail. ENTIRE REVIEW HERE.

Thanks Joey! And this seems like a timely reason to publicly thank Dion Farquhar -- that be Professora Dion -- for assigning PRAU to a course she teaches at U.C. Santa Cruz. Her course assignment had an unexpected significant EFFECT, to wit:

Dion's course depleted the PRAU inventory over at our distributor, SPD. So I was packing up some boxes of PRAU for SPD and Mom happened to walk by. She asked what I was doing, and I explained.

Mom was very pleased to learn that PRAU is being used as a textbook (perhaps because Mom is also a former teacher). As a result, she said, "Let's do it again!"

"Do what again, Mom?" I replied.

"A SECOND FILAMORE TABIOS, SR. POETRY MEMORIAL PRIZE," Mom declared!

You may recall that PRAU got published as a result of having won the first -- and what I thought would be an only -- Filamore Tabios, Sr. Poetry Memorial Prize (scroll down HERE to Feb. 2007 post for information). This is a poetry competition for Filipino poets worldwide.

So, what Mom wants Mom gets. Sometime next week, I hope to send out the Call for this global competition -- there apparently is much interest in a competition like this. PRAU, aptly, engenders waves. You should also let this lovely boat come to your shores!