Asked to give a few words to close the program, University Professor Emeritus Gemino Abad thanks the anonymous donor of the awards named after him, UP, his parents, and his wife. Photo by Bong Arboleda.
In honor of the University Professor Emeritus for his lifetime work in the humanities, UP established the Gémino Abad Awards for Poetry and Literary Criticism which had its first awarding ceremony on November 11, 2016, at the Executive House in UP Diliman.
Thomas David Chaves, UP Diliman Department of English and Comparative Literature (UPD-DECL) assistant professor and PhD student of Creative Writing, won in the poetry category for his collection “Imelda and Catullus: Two Sequences.” He received a certificate and P10,000.
Ronn Andrew Angeles, an MA student of Creative Writing; Jade Katherine Emily Castro, a BS Materials Engineering undergraduate; and Benedict Parfan, a PhD student of Creative Writing, each received a certificate and P2,500 as finalists for the top poetry prize.
Chaves received a special citation for his critical essay “The Poet as Ethnographer: An Imaginary Interview with Alfred A. Yuson”, but there was no winner in this category.
The jury, headed by DECL Assistant Professor Paolo Manalo, included DECL Professor and UP Press Director Jose Neil Garcia and Assistant Professor Francisco Danilo Reyes of the Loyola School of Humanities, Ateneo de Manila University.
The Abad Awards, administered by the Office of the Vice President for Academic Affairs (OVPAA) and the UP Diliman Department of English and Comparative Literature (DECL), was established in 2015 with support from an anonymous donor. According to OVPAA, the donor wished to recognize Abad’s contribution in bringing the University to Elite status in English language and literature in the 2015 QS World Rankings.
The contest is open to all students of the UP System.
In her welcome remarks, VPAA Gisela Concepcion said the University needs more mentors like Abad, who would spawn a new generation of mentors “exceeding their antecedents.” She said she and Abad had a common mentor in the late English professor Concepcion Dadufalza.
In her closing remarks, DECL Chair Lily Rose Tope talked about poets providing knowledge of human nature and hope.
Asked to close the program, Abad thanked the anonymous donor, UP, his parents, and his wife.
According to the DECL, Abad was the first Filipino to win the Premio Feronia in Rome, Italy under the foreign author category. He received the Gawad Dangal ng Lahi 2016 from the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for his contribution to Filipino literature and scholarship.
Aside from being University Professor Emeritus who has taught courses in English, Comparative Literature, and Creative Writing, over the years Abad has served as Secretary of the University and the Board of Regents, Vice President for Academic Affairs, and director of Likhaan: the UP Creative Writing Center.
For more photos of the event, please click through the album below.
