Simeon Dumdum Jr. (born March 7, 1948) is a former Regional Trial Court Judge in Cebu City, Philippines, and is a published poet. He once studied for the priesthood in Galway, Ireland, but left the seminary to take up law. After years of practicing law, he was appointed Regional Trial Court judge. He won prizes for his poetry, which he has published and read in the Philippines and abroad.
Early years
He was born in Balamban, Cebu, where he grew up and had his early schooling. He attended St. Francis Academy for his secondary education, and then went to St. Clement's College in Iloilo City, where he did a year of college. In Ireland, he went to Cluain Mhuire and University College, Galway. [1]
Author/Awards
He has published 17 books - >The Gift of Sleep (poems), >Third World Opera (poems), >Love in the Time of the Camera (essays), >Poems Selected and New (poems), >My Pledge of Love Cannot be Broken (essays), >Ah, Wilderness: A Journey through Sacred Time (essays), >If I Write You This Poem, Will You Make It Fly (poems), >To the Evening Star (poems), >Eighty-four Words for Sorrow (poems), >The Poet Learns to Dance (the Dancer Learns to Write a Poem) (poems), >Letter from Fatima (poem), >Partly Cloudy (poems), >Aimless Walk, Faithful River (poems), >Marawi and Other Poems (poems), >“Why Keanu Reeves is Lonely and Why the World Goes On As It Does” (poems), >“Mass at the Edge of Morning” (poem), and, >in collaboration with his wife, Ma. Milagros T. Dumdum, "The Sigh of a Hundred Leaves" (renga).
In 2001, he received the Gawad Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas Award for Poetry in English from the Unyon ng mga Manunulat sa Pilipinas (UMPIL). He won second and third prizes in the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for English poetry five times, [2] and the Manila Critics Circle's National Book Award five times. [3] Three of his books (Ah, Wilderness: A Journey through Sacred Time in 2010; If I Write You This Poem, Will You Make It Fly in 2012; and Aimless Walk, Faithful River back to back with The Poet Learns to Dance, the Dancer Learns to Write a Poemin 2018) were given by the National Book Development Association of the Philippines the Gintong Aklat (Golden Book) Award. In 2005, he received a medallion for writing the best decision in a criminal case, second level courts, in the Judicial Excellence Awards sponsored by the Supreme Court of the Philippines. [4]
References
- ^ Dumdum, Simeon; Mo, Timothy; Mojares, Resil (2004), "In conversation: Cebuano writers on Philippine literature and English", World Englishes, 23 (1): 191–198, doi: 10.1111/j.1467-971X.2004.00344.x.
- ^ Palanca award winners 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 2011 Archived September 8, 2012, at archive.today.
- ^ National Book Award winners: [ http://manilacritics.tripod.com/w2.html Love in the Time of Camera, Essay category, 1998; My Pledge of Love Cannot be Broken and Other Essays on, Alas, More Fragile and Edible Things, Essay category, 2002; [ http://manilacritics.tripod.com/w4.html Poems: Selected and New, 1982-1997, Poetry category, 1999; Ah, Wilderness: a Journey through Sacred Time (General Non-fiction category, 2009; and If I Write You This Poem, Will You Make It Fly, Poetry category.
- ^ 2005 Judicial Excellence Awardees Archived August 16, 2007, at the Wayback Machine.
Further reading
- Ypil, Lawrence L. (July 2003), "Representations of the Unconscious in Simeon Dumdum's The Gift of Sleep", Kritika Kultura (3), archived from the original on 2011-05-16.
- Love Makes the World Go Round, excerpted from Love Gathers All: A Philippine-Singaporean Anthology of Poetry.