It was all too surreal. All in an ecstatic mood after the closing of Frankfurter Buchmesse, Kristian Sendon Cordero, long acknowledged and acclaimed not only as a poet and novelist but also for his successful ongoing mission of making Bikol literature known to the rest of the country and the world, received distressing news from home: His six-year old prized bookshop, the independent bookstore Savage Mind: Arts, Books, Cinema in Naga City, was flooded beyond salvage by Typhoon “Kristine.”
Though thousands of miles away from home because of his participation at the Buchmesse as a key member of the official Philippine delegation and cochair of the translation committee, Cordero was not initially alarmed about the weather conditions in Bicol as it was officially declared to be Signal No. 1. And just two months ago, when floodwaters were in the bookshop, he thought he had taken sufficient precautions against flooding. He had then transferred books and important materials to a higher location. His parents, residing in nearby Iriga, were on their way to Naga, but could not traverse the flooded streets which had become impassable to all vehicles.
And what could really be done to save Cordero’s Savage Mind when floodwaters had reached the ceiling? And all this time, Kristian’s more urgent concern was to save the bookshop’s well-loved resident cats—Innova, Kaiju, Laya. They were rescued by animal activists unscathed.
What a somber note to the Frankfurter Buchmesse as the Philippines was gearing up to be the guest of honor in 2025, and where Cordero had played a significant and prominent role in various fora and panels as recognized writer, translator, and cultural ambassador of Bicol and Philippine writings—a lifetime mission of his. He is director of the Ateneo de Naga University Press, said to be the largest publisher of Bikoliana in the world.
Bikol Book Festival
It is hard to imagine this tragedy when, in late September, less than a month before the natural calamity, several of us were at Savage Mind, the Kamarin Art Space, and the Tugawe Café for the last phase of the monthlong Bikol Book Festival, with the prophetic theme of “Healing and Grace.”
The festival, on its third year, has been a laudable, pioneering initiative by Cordero to gather writers based in Manila and from the regions for a dialogue on their craft and the arts. The refrain seemed to be, “We are not separated by water, water connects us.” He had been asked in the past about being located in a flood-prone area and he would shrug it off, pointing to Venice as an example of survival amid the waters.
The last week of the festival began with a powerful videotaped message from Tacloban-based poet, essayist, critic, teacher, and mentor Merlie Alunan. In her keynote, “On the South, to the South: Building Literary Corridors,” she recounted how joyless it was as a teacher of literature to teach using Anglo-American materials, so far removed from the lives of students.
Sadly, she said that the language of prestige hereabouts is a foreign language, the literature of the margins undervalued. Taking pride in the rich diversity of our over a hundred languages, Alunan said, “Our mother tongues have outlasted empires … No (national language policy) can demolish differences … ”
The next days, with writers from Samar, Daryll Delgado, Jerry Gracio, Sharlene Mae Capate, Geramy Espina, and Emmanuel Barrameda, there was a geniune Waray-Bikol collaboration. What a happy, welcome development that many young writers are coming forward, proud to be writing in the languages they had grown up with and eager to preserve them.
There were also elementary students on a book-related field trip, ogling at the paintings in Kamarin and listening to authors Cordero and this writer talk about their writing lives. The festival ended with a self-publishing session with Anthony Shieh of Central Books.
Welcome surprise
Who goes to Naga without thinking of seeing Leni Robredo? I saw her on a busy afternoon at the Jesse Robredo Museum and told her I wasn’t barging in. It was not on Cordero’s well-planned festival schedule, but there was a highlight, a welcome surprise for everyone when the former vice president graced the “Windows & Women” photo exhibit of UP anthropologist Dr. Francisco Datar, accepting a belated invitation. It was gracious of her, especially since the Samar delegation counted among her most avid campaign enthusiasts.
If the Savage Mind bookshop has become a thriving, successful model of an independent bookshop for the rest of the country and the world, the format of the Bikol Book Festival also serves as a model. It wasn’t all lectures and workshops in a confined conference area. Interspersed with literary conversations were field trips—a day trip to writer-translator Fr. Wilmer Tria’s self-sufficient parish in Pili; Project Susog and Ryan Cuatrona’s community initiatives in Buhi, with handloom attempts for local weaves; the Cecilio Press established in 1947, Naga’s enduring cultural institution which prints out devotional booklets today; the Hinulid 3 visit, the seminary with the Peñafrancia exhibit; and the visit to the cemetery to pay respects to Bikol’s literary figures Maria Lilia Realubit and Carlos Aureus.
Disbelief
With these recent literary conversations still fresh in our minds, we remain in disbelief about the loss (temporary, of course) of Savage Mind.
We who work with Cordero in his many endeavors grieve and feel the loss of Savage Mind deeply, like a death in the family. Especially these days as we see brave attempts to save what can still be saved, like the signed copies of Jose Garcia Villa’s poetry collection and seeing the bundled damaged books in the garbage truck.
Yet we all know that despite this current bleakness, there remains beauty, hope, courage. Many individuals and groups continue to come forward to offer various forms of assistance.
Who can forget the sign that welcomes all and sundry to the bookshop? “Gather all hopes all ye who enter here.” Savage Mind will find new life and, phoenix-like, rise again.
Consider what Cordero found as one of the few items that survived the destruction and the loss—a rose in an enclosed jar that was part of the bookshop’s “Little Prince” exhibition. The rose held the water that completely destroyed the bookshop. As the fox in the Little Prince said, “It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”
It is all the time Kristian Cordero has wasted on Savage Mind that makes the bookshop so important for all of us.
