The Inventor

📖 The Scoop

Insights into creating poetic forms against an autobiographical background.Part of the Chapter One series acclaimed by Publishers Weekly that presents the writers' craft in real life. Eileen R. Tabios: "I wrote THE INVENTOR not because it's about my life but, because it's an autobiography that connects history, language, and poetry in a unique way beyond narratives. I learned English because it became widespread in my birth land, the Philippines, through U.S. colonialism. That caused me, as a young poet, to feel estranged from my raw material: English. My poetry practice, however, would lift me out of politics to meet poetry more directly as its own type of language. Ultimately, my prolonged engagement with poets, enabled me to create poetry inventions that metaphorically disrupts colonialism by generating communities of readers and writers worldwide. These inventions include the "hay(na)ku" which has spread globally among poets and, most recently, the "Flooid" whose pre-writing condition precedent of a "good deed" makes poetry live redemptively and beyond the page. In THE INVENTOR, I show how Poetry is not mere words but a proactive approach to improving our relationships with each other and life on our planet.""Tabios was the first Filipino American poet that I read and actually liked. I often compare other poets to American or British poets that I had read in college or during the time I was re-discovering poetry. It would be unfair to compare Tabios to anyone else other than herself."--Eunice Barbara C. Novio, Inquirer.netPoetry. Essay. Literary Criticism. History.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography / General (fancy, right?)