A certain type of poetry, in which a nightingale sings in an imagined English hedgerow and a robin hoops across frost that no Filipino reader has ever actually touched, used to predominate English-language literature classes throughout the Philippines. That was really how nature poetry sounded for eons. imported in bulk, taught sincerely, and mainly unaware of what was going on outside the window.
There has been a change, but it has been so subtle that most readers outside of literary circles may not have noticed. The Philippine eagle soaring over the remnants of Mindanao’s old-growth forest, swiftlets threading thru limestone caverns in Palawan, and common maya sparrows perched on tin roofs in rural towns are just a few examples of the birds that a younger generation of Filipino poets have begun incorporating into their works. It seems like a minor change. It isn’t.
There is more going on in these poems than just local flavor or authenticity. Native birds appear to be used by writers as something more like to eyewitnesses, animals that perceive changes on the ground in ways that human narrators occasionally fail to adequately convey. Given how critically endangered the species has become—there may just be a few hundred breeding pairs remaining in the wild—the appearance of a Philippine eagle in a poem now frequently carries the weight of habitat destruction. The bird is not ornamental. It is proof.
Even tho the poets don’t express it explicitly, there is a certain decolonizing tendency present in this work. In a subtle manner, selecting a native species over an imported one is a political gesture, a rejection of literary norms that viewed everything else as alien or regional and European nature as the standard. This change may be a reflection of a larger trend in postcolonial writing as a whole, as authors from once colonized countries have spent the past few decades reclaiming their own landscapes as genuine themes rather than backgrounds taken from someone else’s history.
More than readers might anticipate, sound plays a significant part in several of these poems. A number of modern Filipino authors appear to be fascinated by acoustic ecology, the actual sounds and songs of indigenous birds, and more and more, the silences that remain where those voices once were. A poem that describes the loss of a specific birdsong following a typhoon or logging operation conveys a different kind of sorrow than one that only describes trees that have been damaged. It’s a subtle, and possibly more powerful, approach to writing about loss.
Additionally, none of this is taking place in a vacuum from the nation’s environmental reality. Where these birds may truly thrive has changed due to deforestation, coastal development, and stronger typhoons; the poem appears to be reflecting this reality in real time rather than nostalgically gazing back. The question of whether literature can significantly lessen any of that harm is a whole separate one, and it is probably wrong to place it on poets. They can ensure that these species are remembered as something more than background noise in someone else’s story, which is what this more recent body of work appears to be accomplishing pretty successfully.
