Gacha Press welcomes 2020
with a new poetry collection from Paolo Manalo!
HAPPILY EVER EK-EK
PAOLO MANALO
In this new poetry collection, Paolo Manalo explores the themes of love and satisfying endings with the same linguistic inventiveness of his previous work, “Jolography”. Some of these poems are obsessions with lovers, kisses, and flowers; and the repetition of lines from movies, songs, and video games. It seeks closure through formal skill, and when there is none, comfort in the ek-ek of the imagination.
“So close to romance I almost feel I was led on. But those endings. and some beginnings, and middles. Not romance, but there’s a lot of winking, which on some days is more than enough.”
– MINA V. ESGUERRA
Author of contemporary romances such as “Iris After the Incident” and “What Kind of Day”
“Reading the poems of Paolo Manalo is to be happily ensnared in a web where ek-ek and insight meet.”
– JONATHAN CHUA
Editor of “The Critical Villa” and “The Collected Stories of Jose Garcia Villa”
Available online soon.
E IS FOR EPAL
PAOLO MANALO
“Epal,” is Filipino slang for an annoying or attention seeking person, which is the theme of this interval collection of poems in English, Tagalog, and Taglish on realities overheard or overenunciated. From the author of the prizewinning poetry collection “Jolography.”
“Doing what he does best and what only he can, the poet throws creative chaos in the air, as always, and waves it like he just doesn’t care. He then catches the mayhem with sharp wit and jagged words, blindfolded, and sprinkles the slivers of beauty on paper.
Jolographer than ever, Manalo’s latest literary toknenengs are just as good I almost feel honored that he’s also known as the poemer Bob Ong. GIF smiley.”
– BOB ONG
Restocks soon
VELOCIRUPTURE
MICHAEL BALILI
In this debut poetry chapbook from Michael Balili scenes, landscapes, and contrived interventions are illuminated by a flash of lightning. Velocirupture: the velocity of rupture, an urgency; the rupture of velocity, a delay. Surely the everyday asks to be interrupted?
“Velocirupture’s startling juxtapositions and figurations of free-range absurdity and tenderness mark Michael Balili as a troubadour of our troubled times.”
– Caroline Hau
Restocks soon
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Please search “E is for Epal” or “Velocirupture” from the Amazon website or search for the titles inside the Kindle app to download.
Meet our Authors
Paolo Manalo
E is for Epal
Paolo Manalo’s first collection Jolography (2003) received recognition from the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature and the UP Diliman Gawad Chancellor. It will be re-issued in a Retconned edition by UP Press this 2019. Manalo has received fellowships from the UP National Writers Workshop, the Taboan Writers Festival, and the MacDowell Colony. He teaches English, literature, and creative writing at UP-Diliman.
Michael Balili
Velocirupture
Michael Balili was a fellow of the Ateneo and UP National Writers workshops. His poems have appeared in various anthologies and magazines such as Crowns and Oranges: Works by Young Philippine Poets from Anvil Publishing and the Philippine P.E.N. produced At Home in Unhomeliness: Philippine Postcolonial Poetry in English.
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