Ramon Sunico on AGAM

by Ramon Sunico
June 30, 2017 | Mt Cloud Book Shop

A long time ago I had a very good teacher, his name was Fr. Tom Green. He taught three subjects: Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Science and Prayer. We had good discussions, and in one of them, he asked “What does it mean for you to become a well-educated citizen?” (We’d like to think that’s what we are.)

It struck me what he said. He said “A well-educated citizen during this time” — and that was just the 20th century, a century ago — “should be as comfortable reading Scientific American as Shakespeare. And I’ve looked back and realized that our education system doesn’t do that.

Romulo Baquiran on AGAM

By Romulo Baquiran
June 30, 2017 | Mt Cloud Book Shop

Tama yung sinabi ni Padma, binigyan yung mga authors ng litrato, tapos wala silang alam na objective data tungkol dun sa litrato na yun, at yun yung tinulaan. Ginawa ito ng late 2013 , tapos mabilis na tapos! In three months, ni-launch na early 2014, at 2015 umani ng mga awards.

24 authors na iba-ba, may essayist, may poet, may journalist, meron ding porn artist. Ayun yung cover. Ang gagawin ko lang ay, yung sa poetry kasi yun yung focus ko. Hindi ako pupunta sa kwento o sa essay, dun lang sa poem kasi kailangan may focus. Nung binasa ko yung 8 poems ng mga kasama ko. Basically, ekphrasis pala ang ginawa ng libro. Ekphrasis is mayroong image, painting man yan, or in this case photograph, at yung writer tutulaan niya. Or i-describe, basically. Nauna na yung mga Greeks satin. So itong Agam, Greek pala! Ekphrasis ang tawag.

Grace Monte de Ramos on AGAM

We are really way behind the deadline for saving the planet for ourselves. In many parts of the world, not least in our own corner of it, the effects of climate change have already altered landscapes and lives, led to conflict and privation, and placed in jeopardy the future of our children’s generation. What positive action we do now will perhaps mitigate the ruinous aftermath for our grandchildren. Agam represents our hopes and our most fervent prayers for them.

By Marjorie Evasco on AGAM

Perhaps among the most slippery words to prompt the writing of stories is the word “uncertainty.” But the Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities used it to provoke 24 writers writing in eight languages of the Philippines to illumine this human experience, each writer given a photo-portrait of a survivor of natural hazards, whose voices could now be heard in the narratives and 26 photographs that compose the book “Agam.”Aside from the photo-portrait I was given, which was that of a fisherman who had survived the onslaught of typhoon Ondoy in Mindanao, ICSC also enjoined me to steer clear from using the usual catchwords of environmental science, especially the phrase “climate change” itself. The brief asked each of us to write the human in and with the environment, and to bring to the discourse the problems that have its contexts in specific cultural modes of thinking and behaving within one’s specific environment.