While Ruiz Wall holds tightly to the interplay between displacement and reconciliation, the equally veteran Bobis provokes a deeper scrutiny of the mindset in relation to a specific experience:

Once in Port Kembla, she looked away and cut
Your hair, clean at the nape—and laid the brown plait
In your hands. 'Be sure to keep it,' she said,
Her face turned away to the ocean that witnessed your long journey
From home. Did she feel, in the roots of her own hair,
The salt spray? The wave that rocked your grief
In this severance from all your beloved? 

Despite these efforts, I still question the value of the convergence of an Australian literary ideology with Filipino poetics. Will it happen soon? Will it explode in a huge way? Is it happening right now? As a Philippines-born, Australia-based poet, my read of the Australian literary community’s expectation of Filipino poetry-writing remains uncertain, with a preferential swing towards vignettes from Chinese, Vietnamese and Arabic Australian writers whose histories appear to be ‘more interesting’ to the current literary establishment than those of Filipinos’. I often feel I’m not Chinese or Indian or Vietnamese enough to garner an audience in the predominantly Anglo-centric Australian literary scene, the way that they could or have.

However, with the likes of Andrada, Ruiz Wall, Bobis, Angela Serrano, Ivy Alvarez, Ricardo M de Ungria, Lawrence Lacamba Ypil and Eleanor Jackson making inroads – deep inroads for some – there seems to be an eagerness to break out of this uncertain mould and into the annals of contemporary Australian literature. There is huge hope in that path. And with the tenacity of the poets in the Philippines to maintain the deep courage necessary for challenging the status quo and exalting the spoken word movement, there is also cause for hope in me that history does not repeat itself.

I’d like to think that the bristling pace of the current poetic socio-cultural expression in the Philippines could lead to more accessibility for expat (or exiled) poets like me to participate in such a shift. Sure, there’s still a big rosy-cheeked, romantic expectation of what a poet should be in the Philippines, but there’s no reason why the phenomenology of love and hope could not be translated into love for one’s freedom of expression and a fearless hope for a country’s unshackled future. As for this poet, a brighter path towards self-identity in a sea of strange faces and confusing Australian ideals is slowly being paved.