The preface, though not necessary in many books, is helpful here as it provides a glimpse of the author’s extensive reading. It helps readers traverse with some degree of confidence the poems’ dark, haunting habitation: a habitation that shows the writer’s prodigious literary energy sustained by her wide-ranging interest in speculative literature. Aside from mythology, the overlapping areas of history, popular culture, science especially astronomy, literature, and info technology are the rich sources for the promptings and the inner working of the poems. Thus, there’s always this sensation of exhilarating encounter when reading Kristine Ong Muslim. Continue reading Book Review: Kristine Ong Muslim’s “Black Arcadia”
Author: Arlene J Yandug
Arlene J Yandug is the editor of Carayan Journal and director of Xavier University Press. Her second poetry collection titled "Remembering the South: Poems at Home with Mindanao and Elsewhere" has been successfully defended for her PhD dissertation in Creative Writing at the University of the Philippines - Diliman. Her poems have appeared in Red River Review, Bisaya Magazine, Tomas, Bulawan Literary Journal of Northern Mindanao, Kinaadman Journal of the Southern Philippines, Home Life, Future Lovecraft, Under the Storm: An Anthology off Contemporary Philippine Poetry, among others. In 2014, her poem "Going Back to the Island" set in the Camiguin Island of her Childhood, won in the Void poetry contest of Cha: An Asian Literary Journal. She was a fellow at the Iligan National Writers Workshop and the Silliman University National Writers Workshop and currently teaches creative writing, poetry, literary translation, and new writings from the 'regions' at Xavier University- Ateneo de Cagayan. She served as panelist at the 2016 Cagayan de Oro Writers Workshop. Her forthcoming literary projects include her third book-length poetry collection and an anthology of new writings from Northern Mindanao.