POST BOOK: ERIC VALLES

 The Halo-Halo Review is pleased to interview authors in the aftermath of their books’ releases. This issue’s featured authors include Eric Valles:

What is your most recent book? 

After the Fall/Despues de la Caida, the international English-Spanish edition of After the Fall (dirges among ruins) with new poems. It is Eric’s version of the Singapore Literature Prize-shortlisted After the Fall (dirges among ruins) after the latter went out of print. This international version gives the collection a wider reach, introducing Southeast Asian history and concerns to the Spanish-speaking world. Just as learning a new tongue gives one a new life, this edition is essentially a literary resurrection.

Who published and when was it released? 

It was published by Dendro Ediciones in July. The collection takes Asian experiences on a poetic journey across oceans.

 

What has been the response/what has surprised you most about the response? 

The response has been remarkable for a limited print run: I am getting copies in batches of 15 to 20 from Lima, Peru. People I know only virtually are ordering copies, crossing digital boundaries for a physical book. I met a UP professor at a NUS alumni homecoming here, and she introduced me to several Pinoy alumni who are going on medical missions to depressed communities back home. Another Facebook friend in a music appreciation group contacted me via Messenger and wrote, “Inuunti ko lang basahin” [I am reading the book bit by bit]. I say, “Take your time. That took my whole adult life to write.” That shows poetry is being lived rather than just consumed as discounted commodities.

 

Tell me something not obvious or known about the book.

It has several layers of meaning: It started out as a poetic response to the catastrophic 9/11 (after the literal fall of the Twin Towers), and I visited Manhattan (avoiding the subway, a possible terrorist target) a month after that watershed moment. Then the collection progressed into a look back at the Japanese occupation of Singapore (after the fall of Singapore, which was a big blow to the British Empire and the start of a nationalist consciousness here and in ANZAC). On a spiritual level, it also became a meditation on the ravages of original sin (after the fall of Adam and Eve).  It asks how we can seek grace and hope in a pockmarked world. 

 

What are you working on right now?

I am struggling with a cycle of poems on the exile of Eurasian Singaporeans in Bahau, Malaya during the Japanese occupation. That is morphing into an exploration of inter-generational trauma involving people in Southeast Asia and Taiwan (where I lived in the 1990s). That may yet become a novella in verse – if I ever find free time after planning lessons and marking student papers. It is a beautiful distraction. Wish me luck. 

 

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Eric Tinsay Valles recreates home in exile, whether physical or spiritual. He won a Goh Sin Tub Creative Writing prize for poems in his second collection, After the Fall (dirges among ruins), which has been translated to Spanish in an international edition (Despues de la Caida).  His first poetry book was A World in Transit. He won Illumination, ELit Living Now and Catholic Media Book awards for his co-edited anthologies. He co-edited the Get Lucky and Get Luckier anthologies of Singapore and Filipino writings, Sg Poems 2015-2016, Anima Methodi, The Nature of Poetry, The Atelier of Healing and Finding God in All Things. He has been featured in & Words, Reflecting on the Merlion, Southeast Asian Review of English, Straits Times, Routledge’s New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing and other journals. His critical essays have appeared in The Asiatic and Writing Diaspora. He has been invited to read poetry or commentaries at Baylor, Melbourne and Oxford Universities as well as the Kistrech Poetry Festival and Jakarta Content Week. He is a director of Poetry Festival (Singapore).