Students enhance creative writing skills with 5-time Palanca Awardee
Attentive high school students
Roeyna Faminsaran, Angelica Quitason,
Jonathan Tagamolila and Agne Lofil during
the radio newcasting demo
Ripples spent its sixth year in writing business through a Summer Creative Writing Course facilitated in by 5-time Palanca awardee Prof John Iremil Teodoro.
About 50 participants flocked to the multi-purpose hall AdI as Prof. Teodoro lectures Japanese Gnomic Poetry, Traditional Filipino Poetry, Free Verse Poetry, and the short story. Also helping USA Publishing House director Teodoro were his associates Elsed Togonon, editor of Irong-Irong Publication and English professor Arlene Moscaya.
Held April 9-14, the workshop had 15 students from grade school and 35 students from high school. This includes two students from Sun Yat Sen High School and one from Iloilo Central Commercial High School.
Themed, “Carpe Diem!,” meaning “Seize the Day,” the six-day affair offered a four-day poetry workshop specifically about short stories, luwa, tanaga, tanka, haiku, renga, sonnets, and free verse poetry.
In the last two days, a crash course on the basics of journalism was held. National photojournalism judge Harwell Capistrano and Daily Inquirer correspondent Hazel Villa discussed and trained the participants on the rudiments of photojournalism, photography, feature and editorial writing. Ripples moderator Herman Lagon followed suit and covered writing news, essay and sports articles, and working with editorial cartoon and newspaper lay-outing. He also held simulations and workshops on radio and TV broadcasting.
To note, Prof. Teodoro, also a coordinator of the Fray Luis Creative Writing Institute, is already on his third year as creative writing seminar facilitator for Ripples. But he never gets tired of it.
“Ever since, I already enjoyed the company of the Ateneo writers,” Prof. Teodoro said, adding, “in fact, every year, I am always surprised with the richness of talents in your fold.” With this, Teodoro promised to publish about 15 best poetry articles made by the participants in the Irong Irong, the official literary publication of University of San Agustin (USA).
Prof. Teodoro, it was learned, has just likewise offered three free-of-charge slots for Ripples to the 5th San Agustin Writers’ Workshop that he organized. It is set first week of May and will focus more on screenplay writing. (with reports of Jyska Kuan Ken and Angelica Quitasol)