美女一级特黄大片

美女一级特黄大片 recently interviewed poet Romalyn Ante about her new collection, Agimat. Winner of the Arthur Welton Award, Agimat is a luminous, unflinching exploration of historical and personal trauma, healing, and the ancestral forces that shape Filipino lives across borders. In this piece, Ante discusses “moving beyond the personal” as she tackled delicate themes — from the Japanese occupation to the emotional toll of frontline care as a specialist nurse — as a way of finding healing and power through storytelling, which she describes as her own agimat (talisman).

By Rhine Bernardino  

Your debut collection Antiemetic for Homesickness offered an intimate portrait of migration, longing, and care. Now with, you seem to be reaching even deeper 鈥� calling on mythologies, wrestling with historical trauma, and drawing from the intense reality of frontline nursing. Could you tell us how your experience of writing the first book influenced your vision for Agimat?聽

While the first book focused on personal experiences of dislocation and longing, Agimat 鈥攅specially the trauma of being on the COVID-19 frontlines, and the trauma that can be inherited through generations (through the Japanese occupation of the Philippines). Antiemetic was a book of self discovery; Agimat became a book of ancestral reckoning and responsibility. The process of writing the first book taught me to hold space for vulnerability and intimacy, but with Agimat, I felt I had to move beyond the personal and write ‘larger’; I looked deeper in my history, in the forces that shape colonialism, diaspora, and care.聽聽

Many writers and artists struggle with 鈥渟econd-book dread鈥� after a successful debut. As you began working on Agimat, did you experience any pressure? How did you balance external expectations with your own desire to explore new creative territory?  

People often talk about that 鈥渟econd-book dread鈥� after a debut 鈥� especially when the first book resonates with readers. There鈥檚 an expectation for the second book to either meet or exceed that. But I think what helped me was grounding myself in my creative needs and rejecting the idea that I was somehow bound to repeat myself or cater to external pressures. I took it as an opportunity to explore new territories of writing that I hadn鈥檛 touched in Antiemetic 鈥� mythology as self-portraiture, narratives of historical trauma, and the tensions between personal and collective histories. I approached Agimat as an unfolding of ideas rather than something I had to do “better.”  

For me, poetry is a way to search for power and strength. Writing Agimat was how I created my own talisman.

鈥�Agimat鈥� in Filipino culture connotes an amulet or charm that bestows protection. What drew you to this concept as the central motif for your new collection? Do you view poetry as something that can function as a protective talisman, offering psychic or emotional 鈥榓rmour鈥� against external pressures like colonial legacies or even the daily strains of frontline work?  

The agimat 鈥� or amulet 鈥� is very important in Filipino folklore. I was drawn to it because it has two sides: it protects, but it also holds power and brings change. My father鈥檚 family, in particular, were known for carrying and searching for agimat.  

Writing poetry feels like searching for your own agimat. You have to go through challenges 鈥� like facing monsters and tests in a far-off, dangerous mountain鈥攖o find your special talisman. For me, poetry is a way to search for power and strength. Writing AGIMAT was how I created my own talisman. 

This collection references the Japanese occupation in the Philippines, alongside the COVID-19 pandemic. What compelled you to bridge these seemingly distant eras and geographies in your poems?  

The histories of trauma, displacement, and survival aren鈥檛 limited to certain times or places 鈥� they keep echoing. When I think about the Japanese occupation in the Philippines, I also think about the COVID-19 pandemic. Both were 鈥渨ars鈥� we had to fight, showing similar systems of inequality, exploitation, and resilience, especially in healthcare. Even though the situations are different, the emotional impact connects these two times. I wanted Agimat to show how trauma, whether past or present, affects our bodies, language, and memories. These are all part of a bigger story that still shapes our lives today.  

You interweave Tagalog, English, Japanese, and even the pre-colonial Filipino writing system, Baybayin. Could you reflect on the moments when a word or phrase calls for a specific language? Are there certain emotional or historical nuances in them that resist direct translation, demanding to remain in their original form?  

In Agimat, the talisman isn鈥檛 just a physical object 鈥� it鈥檚 language itself. Language carries deep emotional and historical meaning, and some feelings or ideas can only be fully expressed in their original form. For example, certain words in Tagalog or Baybayin have cultural meanings that are hard to translate into English. Tagalog, with its rich layers, can hold multiple meanings at once 鈥� a complexity that English sometimes can鈥檛 capture.  

One of the opening poems in Agimat is a love poem: “My father asks why I date a Japanese man.” In a similar way, Japanese words hold a kind of spiritual and emotional power that English can鈥檛 fully capture. Writing in these languages lets me both critique the language of the Philippines鈥� former colonizers and honour the language of my “lover” 鈥� now my husband. It opens up a deeper emotional space, where the rawness of the language reflects the rawness of the experience. At times, the decision to leave a word untranslated is about honouring the specificity of the moment, allowing readers to feel that difference without smoothing it over with translation.  

Family and intimate relationships thread through your collection, sometimes as emotional anchors, other times as sources of conflict or nostalgia. In what ways do your mother, father, and lover’s narratives intersect with the broader issues of migration and intergenerational trauma? Were there moments you hesitated to share personal details, and how did you navigate this?  

My experiences shape my understanding of the world: the complex legacies of migration, history, and healing. But much of this collection also draws from imagination. My real experiences served as starting points, but imaginative energy guided the work and helped me explore deeper emotional truths.  

As an NHS nurse, you鈥檝e witnessed firsthand the toll of COVID-19. Did writing about your patients and frontline colleagues serve as a form of catharsis, or did it amplify the weight of your own experiences? How do you ethically navigate portraying real people and their stories in your work?  

Writing about the pandemic and frontline work didn鈥檛 necessarily offer catharsis in the traditional sense. The weight of those experiences is still very much with me. As a specialist nurse for children and young people鈥檚 mental health, I was constantly on the frontlines of emotional pain. My mother was nursing at A&E and the general medical field. Writing from all these experiences allowed me to wrestle with the ethical dilemmas and emotional tolls of that work. Like I mentioned before, what I wrote weren鈥檛 necessarily “true” stories, but rather hold emotional “truths.” The work also allowed me to process these experiences and ideas, while honouring and giving space for their stories to be heard.  

A recurring theme in this book is being on the move or being in transit, commuting between home and hospital, being in trains and buses, between the Philippines and the UK. How do these journeys inform the emotional landscape of Agimat? 

Movement, whether it鈥檚 physical or emotional, is central to the core of Agimat. Whether commuting between home and hospital, or journeying form ‘pain’ to ‘love’ and ‘hope’, the constant transition is a metaphor for the liminal space that so many of us experience. You鈥檙e always in between 鈥� never fully here, never fully there. These transitions shape how I experience the world, as both a nurse and a migrant, and as a woman. The emotional landscape of Agimat is defined by that constant journeying 鈥� of being in transit, of carrying multiple identities, and of confronting what it means to live.  

To end in a more hopeful note, having woven together historical trauma, frontline realities, and personal relationships, do you feel this collection has carved out a path of healing, for yourself and perhaps for your readers as well? What do you hope readers carry forward into their own journeys?  

Healing is finding strength in the pain, sitting with the pain, without the need to erase or fix it straightaway. The collection is as much about the journey of survival as it is about the necessity of storytelling.

I hope Agimat serves as a form of healing, but not necessarily in a neatly tied-up, cathartic way. Healing, for me, is painful. When we get a cut, the sight inflames. When we break a bone, we can鈥檛 move our limb for days, months, or even years. Healing is finding strength in the pain, sitting with the pain, without the need to erase or fix it straightaway. The collection is as much about the journey of survival as it is about the necessity of storytelling. I believe this book will resonate with readers who also feel the weight of historical and personal trauma and the complexities of cultural belonging. Since Agimat, I have become a different person. Earlier this year, I experienced my first personal loss. My dog of 12 years, Tia 鈥� who had been with me since I was a young woman, through qualifying as a nurse and a therapist, becoming a writer, and getting married 鈥� passed away. I鈥檓 also now a mother. I don鈥檛 know what I鈥檒l write in the future, but I know it will be different. Maybe shorter poems 鈥� honestly, I barely have time to write these days!  

I hope readers are reminded that pain deepens our resilience 鈥� and may they find the magic that lives in words. 

About the author

Rhine Bernardino is an artist, independent curator and researcher. They hold a Bachelors Degree in Film and Audio Visual Communication at the University of the Philippines (Diliman) and an MA Fine Art degree (Sculpture) from the Royal College of Art. They were awarded the highly-regarded Abraaj-RCA Innovation Scholarship and they received a Distinction for their MA dissertation on exploring possibilities of contemporary art practice in the rural context and communities vis-脿-vis urban practices.