The poet-journalist on Facebook
When such a one as Lina Sagaral Reyes passes to eternity, especially given her age (63), and with the knowledge that she could have done more, this grieves the community of writers no end.
Cause of death on December 14 was acute coronary syndrome, according to younger sister, Maria Yvette, with another friend adding that there was malnourishment as aggravating factor. Even without this information, people of the stature of poet-professor Merlie Alunan were moved to eulogize Lina in the special language of poetry.
Quoted in full with her permission is Merlie’s tribute to the once gamine woman who was unafraid to plumb depths in her award-winning prose and poetry:
ELEGY FOR A POET
For Lina Sagaral Reyes
…it rained three days and three nights…
even now staccato of raindrops
on leaves of trees pavements
rooftops growling in the eaves
the waterspouts
the birds silenced
the sky silt gray
mud on the trail to the hilltop
where heaven is nearest…
…go into the rain, poet…
mark the muddy foot trail
with your every step… no kiss
nor wealth nor fame can hold us here
…we will see you when the trail ends
to the sun burning…the wind
and air… air…only air…
Playwright Malou Jacob also took to Facebook to mourn Lina’s death. Following is her verse in full:
MACROVIEW
For Lina Sagaral Reyes, Ars Poetica
If poetry is “blood remembering,”
Then it must be all about me.
At long last here I am
At the foot of the muse
(after decades of prose
on human condition)
Ready to start the uphill journey
To ride her wings with my life at my back.
Will I soar like Icarus?
And burn myself into ashes?
Or will I be Sisyphus?
Will my rock refuse to crack open and
Insist on rolling back time and again?
Or will my heart explode into smithereens?
Will the muse be my Ibong Adarna?
That will heal my soul with prayers?
Calm my heart with chants?
And silence my troubled mind into sleep?
I shall put “death in chains”
With my poetry.
Yvette described her late elder sister as one with “a strong personality who lived a colorful life.” The two had a love-hate relationship ,since Lina harbored high expectations from people she loved.
The sister continued, “Her view of the world was uncompromising so it was difficult to maintain relationships. I remember her as headstrong, but she also had a fragile side and nursed many insecurities about her writing. She had quite a temperament, but she had humility, too. She was a mixture of many things. When she found a cause, she was passionate about it.”
At a young age, Lina was bringing prestige to the Reyes family as a champion speller and essayist, thus exempting her from house chores. Her parents gave her special attention.
In 2013, however, Lina, a journalist by then, was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and suffered a breakdown. She had to be confined at the House of Hope in Cagayan de Oro. She reached out to Yvette for help during that stay in the facility. This experience turned Lina into an advocate for mental health, to the extent that she helped the House of Hope in its fund-raising efforts to improve its facilities. She wrote project proposal letters to potential donors and the like.
Yvette noted that her sister could not last long in a job, perhaps a sign of her illness. “She had many traumas in her life. She would end up not trusting a person. After a while, she entertained doubts or felt cheated and betrayed. Everything had to be black or white, there was no gray area.”
Lina’s gift to her, though, was the “passion for activism and fighting for human rights. She was my idol there. She opened my eyes to the inequalities in the world and in our country. Our family was conservative and pro-Marcos, but Lina opened our eyes to the truth behind Martial Law.”
Such was Yvette’s awakening that she took Lina to Palestine where the latter embraced and dedicated herself to the Palestinian cause. The sisters returned to the Philippines, then Lina went back, choosing to overstay her visa, until Yvette had to rescue her in the West Bank to get her out of a dangerous zone. Lina was about to be arrested because of her expired visa.
Baguio-based journalist Frank Cimatu recalled meeting the “petite, kulot (curly-haired)” Lina in the early 1990s. He said, “She was always in black, leading the poetry readings at that time. The first locally organized ones I found unimpressive. But with her, she corralled some good poets. Her poems were great. We didn’t really hit it off. She was more drawn to (journalist) Nonnette Bennet and other women. This was the time of the renaissance of literature in Baguio. Luisa (then Cariño, now Igloria) was still in the country. The members of the Philippine Literary Arts Council were always in Baguio. There was Legato Bookshop. So Lina was right smack in things, always with the Cordillera Women Education and Research Center and the women’s groups. There were lots of readings then.”
He heard of stories of her involvement with a prominent artist who was a party boy. “We often drank at Rumours and other places. I wasn’t surprised that they became an item. It proved fatal for her. Then she disappeared and reinvented herself as a journalist. That was how I contacted her in Cagayan de Oro when I got a grant from Evelio Javier Foundation. She was the one I contacted.” Their friendship grew despite the long absence.
The way she expressed herself to Frank, she could not even stay in Bohol “where she was much admired,” he said, and had to move to Cagayan de Oro where she became a correspondent for the Philippine Daily Inquirer and a contributor to Women’s Feature Service (WFS).
When Frank was in Cagayan de Oro around 2000, he noticed that she would have paranoid moments, like she’d claim that military agents were pursuing her.
He learned that she was being treated by and staying with the nuns. He said, “She was their grants director or something, the writer of drafts of letters. She was candid about her condition, and was still taking meds when I last saw her.”
To him she was like the lead character in the French movie starring Isabelle Adjani, Adelle H. He surmised that she and her former lover never met again. He sighed, “The heartbreak over Baguio boys—grabe!”
Writing her tribute for https://womenwritingwomen.com, Olive Tripon, formerly of WFS, said of Lina, “You introduced me to the ‘witches’ of De La Salle Taft. We had meetings there, and I was bewitched by the sorcery of words. Our poetry exchanges led you to link me (albeit only as an observer) with gurus of Silliman in Dumaguete. For this, I will forever be grateful for meeting the Tiempos, Merlie Alunan and Marj Evasco, who became a WFS member of the board. I often talked about your stories in trainings and WFS events—Betamax as a family planning tool or women who bled in ‘uncharitable wards.’ Thank you for the stories. Now I’m curious about your ‘raw’ poems.”
The remains of Lina Sagaral Reyes in a chapel in Villalimpia, Loay, Bohol
Poet and retired DLSU professor Marj Evasco traced her affinity to Lina. They belong to the Reyes clan of Ubay, Bohol. She said, “Both my maternal grandfather’s and grandmother’s middle names were Reyes. Lina’s father, Leonides, and my father, Florentino, were good friends from when my father was teaching at the Ubay High School. Growing up, I frequented the house of Lina in Villalimpia whenever my parents brought the whole family for a swim in Loay beach. Before and after the swim, we’d go to Tio Ned’s and Tia Monica’s house, where the snacks and lunch would be prepared. In turn, Tio Ned would bring his family to visit us in our house on Tamblot St., Tagbilaran City. Lina’s eldest sister, Grace, who is younger than me, studied piano, and I would lend her my piano books and other books from our family library at home.”
She grew to know Lina better in Dumaguete when the Evascos lived there from 1979 to1983. “She’d often visit and eat with us after school, or sleep over on weekends and holidays in San Jose Extension. In Silliman, we formed a writers’ group then, composed of Tony Tan, Cesar ‘Sawi’ Aquino, Henry Villalba, Grace Monte de Ramos, An Llego, Elson Elizaga, Crejan Mosot, Alan Larot, Lina and myself. Lina named our group Lunhaw. It means ‘green, the color of growing grass.’ Lina was pursuing her double degree in journalism and English (creative writing). Tony and Sawi were taking their Ph.D., while I was into my M.A.”
Marj observed that Lina as a student was “serious about her work in campus journalism; she was on the staff of The Sillimanian. She was a voracious reader of literature who frequented the library at Hibbard Hall, and with whom I exchanged books and our responses and insights about them. She, like all of us, competed in the annual Arinday Literary Awards. Then when some of us would win, we’d put the money together and enjoy a tartanilla ride around the city while eating banana or kamote cue. She had a zest for these simple pleasures.”
Seated, from left: Geraldine Maayo and Susan Lara; standing, from left: Tony Serrano, Lina Sagaral Reyes, Ross Camara, Marj Evasco, Auggusta de Almeidda, Grace Monte de Ramos and Juaniyo Arcellana
Marj reconnected with Lina when she came to Manila for work in the ’80s. “She shared snippets of her involvement in the people’s movement against the injustices of structural poverty and neocolonialism. As a staunch feminist, she was one of the founding members of Women Involved in Creating Cultural Alternatives and gleefully agreed that like some of us, she was a ‘foaming-in-the-mouth feminist.’”
Asked what she thought of Lina as person and as poet, Marj answered, “Every human being is a complex reality. I am wary of labels that reduce this complexity. From my perspective, it is impossible to dichotomize one’s ars vita from one’s ars poetica. I suspect this perspective was also true of Lina. I saw that she always keenly observed things, people, current events. She carried a ubiquitous pen and notebook where she recorded her experiences. She mostly listened quietly in conversations with friends, but when it came to taking a stand on political issues, she expressed her views with well thought-out depth and intensity. Close friends and family knew her mercurial temperament and associated it with her art-making, her poetry.”
Sometime in the late ’70s, Lina, Grace and Marj won in the Focus Philippines annual poetry awards. Marj described the occasion, “The three of us curious promdis went to Malacañang for the first time to attend the awarding rites presided over by editor Kerima Polotan. Lina lived her poetry before she wrote them, affirming the continuum of her art with the ways she lived life. Her poetry recorded in luminous language the lives of the women, men and children of Villalimpia. These poems as well as Lina’s life and death will remain vital to the consciousness of many women-who-write, who have been indelibly moved by her bravery in the practice of art and activism.”
Marj’s favorite among Lina’s poems is Storya, dedicated to Grace and Onang. Grace was then nursing her firstborn Leona (named after Leona Florentino). “In Lina’s style, she created a persona who wove into the story of teaching the rudiments of breastfeeding the stories of the lives of women like Laureana, Maria, Valeria who dive ‘far below the tethered purse seines of reason and reality’ and keeps alive the stories that their ‘living stirs afloat.’”
Marj called Lina ‘a strong free-diver into such dark and dangerous depths’
Marj called Lina “a strong free-diver into such dark and dangerous depths.”
Fictionist Susan S. Lara and Lina became friends in 1979 when they were part of the Silliman University National Writers Workshop (SUNWW). Susan was a fellow for fiction, while Lina was a student in creative writing under National Artists Edith and Edilberto Tiempo. Susan said, “She attended most of the workshop sessions and activities, but rarely joined the discussions and remained a quiet, attentive observer. She struck me as retiring, shy, unassuming, but she was already one of my first writer-friends. I didn’t discover her remarkable literary gift until much later.”
For Susan, the Silliman Workshop was “a life-changing experience, and I made it a point to spend a week in Dumaguete every summer to recapture the magic. Lina and the other writers would always be there; they made Dumaguete a real home for me and other returning fellows. Many of us started sending our poems and stories to Focus Philippines, the only magazine that published literary works during Martial Law.”
These young writers used to say to each other, “See you in print.” Susan said, “That was one of the ways we kept in touch. Sometime in the mid-’80s, a small group of Silliman writers came to Manila, some to stay for good, others tentatively. Lina stayed for a few years. She visited me a few times at home for coffee and conversation. I left for the US in 1987, and when I came back after a year, I learned to my dismay that she had leukemia, that she had only two years to live. That was when she began to write furiously in a race against time. She won that race, and in the process, won literary awards as well. She went back to Bohol sometime after her recovery.”
Lina’s passing affected Susan deeply. “The death of one so young, one who still had so much to give—I feel that as a profound personal loss, but also the country’s loss. This is the kind of loss from which we cannot recover. How can we recover from losing words beyond our reach because she still held them in her mind when she died?”
Poet Grace Monte de Ramos admitted that “we are really still in shock and trying to make sense of an unforeseen situation. Lina, after all, had been sick before and pulled through. Secondly, our memories are not what they used to be. Then there’s the fact that it has been years since I’ve had a conversation with Lina. Although now and then I hear about her from mutual friends and read about her, I wouldn’t presume to know how she had changed in relation to her poetry. And since I’m not on Facebook, I was not aware of her daily struggles. I am viewing her from a distance of three decades.”
Grace remembers Lina as a campus legend at Silliman University where the latter “was part of a group of young campus writers, and later on became editor of the campus paper. And then became president of the student government. If I recall correctly, she was the first female student government president and the first student to hold both positions. She won a Focus Magazine award for her poetry while still in college.”
Grace also said, “Lina was fearless, willing to take risks both in life and in her writing. She was sweet and full of love. She had strong political views which made their way into the pieces she wrote. I guess you could say that she tried to live according to her beliefs and principles. She was a brave woman.”
She continued, “Lina wrote many other poems that are exhilarating, courageous, inventive and full of love as well. Take her five-part poem, A Legend of Women Bandits, which was published in Kamalayan. Inspired by the Indian bandit Phoolan Devi, the poem uses delightful wordplay and powerful imagery to construct a world where women choose to leave ‘society,’ ‘Honing/Weapons with tenderness.’ Lina experimented with the form, allowing her computer to arrange the lines, which appear like the trail the bandits take into the ravines as policemen chase them.”
Grace cited other examples. “Take her poem about Sanchez Mira, as angry and angsty as any scorned-lover poem. Or Istorya, a dreamy feminist poem which nevertheless takes an unflinching look at women’s lives. Take Conversation, about a friend who was disappeared ‘…and when returned / his tongue cut off at the root / and placed to dry in the saucer of his hands.’ There’s outrage, anguish and grief served in precise, creative language. But also hope and faith and love.”
Cover of Lina Sagaral Reyes’ poetry volume, now a rare book
Gamine-looking Lina Sagaral Reyes
In Lina’s now out-of-print book, Storya, a compilation of 39 poems published by Babaylan Women’s Publishing Collective of St. Scholastica’s College, each entry echoes the sound of her voice, this former gamine in our memory, garbed in a black top, fitting jeans, dangling earrings. She is telling you of heartbreak in the most sparsely chosen words but with no mention of love at all:
TREE WITHOUT LEAVES
How your leaving unleafed me
Wide wide lakes of leaves,
The crackle of breaking
Underfoot.
Memory became a bare crown
Of boughs as taut as the dark-eyed
Nipples of women
Facing the honest mirrors of fears.
“You have strength I can’t name,”
Once you told me.
Now you must
Know: as winds chum
The leaf-lakes belows,
I stand
Rooting with the power
You knew
And named Nameless.
On the rough nodes of my evening
Fireflies nestle,
Blooming.
