11 | A post about Conchitina Cruz
Tuesday, November 17, 2015
Conchitina R. Cruz, more commonly known as "Chingbee", is a Filipino poet who teaches creative writing and comparative literature at the University of the Philippines in Diliman. According to my research, she is indeed a great writer as her awards can prove it. She has won two Palanca Awards, one in 1996 for "Second Skin" and another in 2001 for "The Shortest Distance". In addition to that, her book Dark Hours won the 2006 National Bookstore award for poetry. Some of her works have also appeared in Mid-American Review, Indiana Review, Philippine Studies and the online journal High Chair. In September 2006, Dark Hours was reviewed by Andy Brown, the creative writing program director at the University of Exeter.
After having read the poem Child by Conchitina Cruz herself, according to what I've read in the internet, "the poet has drawn some vivid contrasts. There is contrasts in the nature-life and city life( poet spoke of sampaguitas' smell and also spoke about the city traffics hustle bustle), contrast in a two different kinds of society( the little boy whose face contain all his life, his hard livelihood and our poet and his father sitting in an air-conditioned car). There is another important thing to tell, the poet is not like father, she thinks of he child and draws a parallel in the child's knocking the car window and the tip-tap sound of rain drops.As the car moves on the scent of sampaguitas fade and the silent , which was once broken by the boy's knocking the car window,also increases.But by the end of the poem, poet has drawn a very fine similarity with the boy, poet points out that both the lives of our poet and the ghost faced child are moving fast with traffic, ie. time."
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