Ateneo de Naga opens university press with launching of 2 Bikol books

NAGA CITY (Jan 15, 2012) —The Ateneo de Naga University (AdNU ) starts off 2012 with the formal opening of its university press coinciding with the launching of books of translations in Bikol by two of the region's noted contemporary writers.

When opened on Friday (January 20), the AdNU Press becomes the newest academic publishing center in the country and it is designed to become the premier resource of Bikoliana in the world, said AdNU Press Director Fr. Wilmer Joseph S. Tria.

While AdNU Press as an academic publishing house is open to all who are interested to have a manuscript published, Fr. Tria said that only materials of optimum quality shall be eligible for publication and  submitted manuscripts shall pass through strict evaluation as practiced by university presses worldwide.

The opening of the press will feature the launch of two books of translations in Bikol of the works of John Donne, the renowned 16th century English metaphysical poet, and Rainer Maria Rilke, the German-Austrian poet.

"Doros asin mga Anghel (Air and Angels)," authored by Victor Dennis T. Nierva, is a collection of 53 of Donne's poems from his various compendiums. The book notably includes Bikol translations of all of Donne's Holy Sonnets.

"Doros" is Nierva's second book after "Antisipasyon (Anticipation)," which won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2008.

"Minatubod Ako sa Diklom (I Have Faith in Night)," an anthology comprised of 49 of Rilke's poems translated in Bikol, is the fourth book of  Kristian Sendon Cordero, an award-winning poet.

"Minatubod" includes selections from Rilke's distinguished works, such as "Das Buch vom mönchischen Leben (The Book of Monastic Life)" and "Das Buch von der Pilgerschaft (The Book of Pilgrimage)."

In his introduction to Nierva's "Doros," Dr. Carlos O. Aureus, an award-winning Bikolano fictionist and literary scholar,  said he considers the book as a "tour de force of a translation [with its] fusion of wit and passion, the abrupt entrances, the dislocations, ironies and paradoxes, the air-tight syntaxes, the inner disquiets both sacred and sensual, the metaphysical conceits. [Doros] is not a translation of Donne; [it] is John Donne writing in Bicol."

Cordero's "Minatubod" likewise includes an introductory commendation by the Nagueño Philosophy professor Rey Francis M. Hernandez: "One can say that a feat such as this anthology is neither for the faint of heart nor for the standardly courageous. It seems to be destined only for those who have the foolhardiness, the reckless boldness, that is—and for all its irony—proper only to the poet."

Nierva and Cordero, both faculty members of the AdNU College of Arts and Sciences,  work at its Department of Media Studies and Department of Social Sciences, respectively.

The January 20 event shall be highlighted at 3pm by a lecture on contemporary academic publishing by Maricor E. Baytion, Director of the Ateneo de Manila University Press.

After the lecture,  book launch ceremonies shall follow  at the second floor of AdNU's O'Brien Library at 4:30pm. (ADNUP)