Poets are great canaries for a country’s health. For great poets, their occupational hazards of observation and epistemology can make them accurate judges of a country’s character. This also means you can judge a country by how it treats its poets. Any country unable to bear its poets will never be great.
(Ericson Acosta and Kerima Tariman with son Emman. Photograph by Pablo Tariman from Facebook)
This week saw the death of Ericson Acosta, who may be said to have died under similar circumstances as his partner Kerima Tariman. What caused these two “best and brightest” among Philippine youths to end up leaving a child to work elsewhere on behalf of the poor and oppressed? What caused their deaths at the hands of a country’s military?
The details are many and I don’t go into them here. But the bottom line is you can judge a country by how it treats its poets. Judge. Then act.
—Eileen Tabios
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