HAPPY TENTH BIRTHDAY TO OurOwnVoice!

With its just-released issue, OurOwnVoice (OOV) is completing its tenth year! Wow! It seems like yesterday when I was meeting its editor/publisher Reme Grefalda in San Francisco to discuss this new diasporic journal for Filipino voices. And I had no clue that THIS was what our meeting meant to Reme -- it's interesting how I don't have any sense in my memory that I was being generous, but my involvement apparently meant a lot to Reme. And reading this came on the heels of reading Barbara's recollection of my input in her early years as a poet. Well, now I know what this all means: I'm OLD. Mano a Moi, why dontcha!

Seriously, it's nice to see seeds blossom, as both OOV and Barbara have done with such impact. Perhaps relatedly, here is a drawing given to me by an SFSU student; I think she made it while standing in line for a book signing I was doing after a reading/lecture there a few months back. I'm sorry to say I can't recall her name -- but thank you, Dear, for the image I'm titling "Moon and Mistress" because, mayhap, it might be a good title for a future poem...:



Meanwhile, though I'd gotten involved with OOV specifically to help promote visual art (as Contributing Editor for the Arts), OOV is gracious enough not to ignore my core love. They've asked me to be OOV's Resident Poet for 2010, which means, among other things, THESE POEMS representing recent books and in-progress manuscripts. Thank YOU, OOV -- I am the one to thank you.