Pat Rivera’s book of poetry launched May 4

Pat Rivera’s book of poetry launched May 4

TORONTO–Patria Cabatuando Rivera launched her first book of  poetry in English in Toronto on May 4, 2005. Titled  Puti/White, the book is one of Frontenac Houses  Quartet 2005 lineup. (See website: www.frontenachouse.com

The poems in the collection are almost autobiographical as the author explores her lost roots  and traces her journey from a town in Nueva Ecija to the City of Manila and, later on as an immigrant, Toronto. Filipinos who grew up in the Philippines after the second world war will identify with many of her poems.

Pattys poem Rare Species very recently won the second prize in the Eric Hill Award of Poetic Excellence competition held by QWERTY, a literary magazine published by the English Department of the University of New Brunswick. Her poem will appear in  QWERTYs fall issue. Another poem won an honourable mention in the 1997 ARC National Poetry Magazine Poem of the Year contest. She has received fellowships to the Banff Centre for the Arts and the Hawthornden Castle International Writers Retreat Centre in Edinburgh, Scotland.

The following poem is included in Puti/White:  G.E. radio by Patria Rivera  This is the house father built on the edge of our small town.

A wooden house with a thatched roof and nipa shingles all around. I liked to slide on the cool bamboo slats and peek under my moms loose skirt. She didnt mind two tiny eyes poking between her two fat legs. At four, I waited for the little men and women who sang G.I. songs and lived inside our G.E. radio.
Once, I tore off the radios cardboard back to see my little friends, but all I saw were bulbous tubes and copper wires glistening in the dark. I searched in all the corners, fearing they must have slipped out, thought they hid in the telephone by day and came out every night.
(PRESS RELEASE)