POET-diplomat Vicente Vivencio “Butch” Bandillo, 61, launched his latest book of poems, “Damgo Ug Alimungaw,” in Cebu City last April 27. The bard, who hails from Alcantara, Cebu, is the Ambassador of the Philippines to Bangladesh, including Sri Lanka and Maldives.

“Damgo Ug Alimungaw” consists of over 90 poems. Its cover is an artwork by artist and SunStar Cebu art group chief Josua Cabrera. The book was published with the help of Bathalad Cebu, a group of creative writers.

Bandillo’s other books are “Tsinelas Nga Nalubong sa Danaw” (2009), “Sanglitanan sa Kalipay ug Kasakit” (2003), and “Earth alive, moon eternal” (2001).

A selection of his Cebuano poems, translated into English and Bengali, are included in “The Book of Departures” (2017). Bandillo had edited and co-edited anthologies of poems and stories by Cebuano writers.

In this interview, Bandillo talks about his new book, his life as a poet, the art of poetry, the trickiness of translation and his other literary pursuits.

“Damgo ug Alimungaw” is your first book of poems in Cebuano in the new decade, first since the publication of “Tsinelas nga Nalubong sa Danaw” but fifth overall.

What can lovers of Cebuano literature expect from your new book?

Nothing really new. This book is simply another attempt at navigating the emotional terrain presented in “Tsinelas nga Nalubong sa Danaw.” More guilt and despair, more confessions (about which the reader is enjoined to distinguish between the obscure and the enigmatic) as I hunt for hidden treasures of our native tongue. By the way, this book has an impish twin, which I call “Ang Musimos Mismo.” I had hoped to launch the two books together. But there wasn’t enough time to do it that way.

How did the book come into being? What is the driving force that made you complete the book?

The book became a book because I thought it was time to come up with a book. Seriously now, I was planning (as a person, not a poet) to mark my 60th year with a poetry book, two books in fact. Anyhow, a book of poems is always a posteriori; it never bursts like Athena from the head of Zeus.

You have written hundreds of poems. Was it difficult choosing the poems you feel fit in the new book? How do you feel about the poems you discarded?

Difficult, not really. Painful, yes, somehow. Just as no poem is ever finished, as Paul Valéry mused, for me no poem is ever discarded. How do I feel about the poems I did not include? Well, they are as dear to me as the ones in this book. Some even more so. But they are simply not “inevitable” enough. Something doesn’t sound right. So what I do is revisit them after months or years and, hopefully, under a new alignment of heavenly bodies I would by then find a way to sculpt wayward lines and phrases into shape (and consider these creations for inclusion in some future collection.)

What are the themes that “Damgo ug Alimungaw” explores?

Love, dreams, heartaches, memory, desire. Think of Le Douanier’s The Dream, Marc Chagall’s The Poet Reclining, Giorgio de Chirico’s The Nostalgia of the Infinite.

Being a master of both English and Cebuano languages, how would you tell that a certain poetic germ should be written in a particular language?

Not a master, no, thank you. Only a student, a keen one if at all. If this question were posed to me 20 years ago, even 10 years ago, my answer would have been quite different. Well, we are all familiar with the dog-eared advice saying one should write in the language one is most comfortable in. I beg to disagree. I believe that if you’re Cebuano and you grew up speaking the language notwithstanding your exposure to English—or some other language—you should write in Cebuano. As you may know, I wrote and published poems (a few hundreds, imagine) in English until my early 40s. I dreamt in English, too, and played genial host to English poetic germs crawling all over me. When I realized that I should be writing my poems in Cebuano, I had to learn the language, and had to make the painful decision of giving up several love affairs (with other intellectual pursuits, that is) to have the time to study how to express myself as a poet in my native tongue. Needless to say, my initial frustrations in this regard have simply taken on other guises as I write on. Of course, I hope to have retained my little command of English, which I need for my day job.

What can you say about these so-called “experimental” poets who are trying to make comic strips into poems? Is it really possible to fuse these two different mediums and call it poetry?

It’s possible indeed. The merit of such a work of art, of course, depends on the skill of the experimenter. Fusing these two different mediums is one thing; calling it poetry is another. Which reminds me of the following anecdote: An uncouth Englishman was taken to court for calling a duchess a pig. At the trial, he courteously asked the judge that, well, he understood that one might not call a duchess a pig, but might one be allowed to call a pig a duchess? “Of course,” the judge said, whereupon our guy faced the duchess, bowed and said, “Good morning, Duchess.” You see, anyone can call anything poetry. Poetry in motion. Spoken poetry. Comic strip poetry.

Some Cebuano writers published their works accompanied with translations. No Bandillo book of that kind. Why?

Well, it’s a matter of taste, judgment, and sense of self. I believe in presenting my works to the general public (which is what an original publication of a book is all about) without the encumbrance of translations, blurbs or introductions because to my mind these “attachments” tend to compromise the reader’s appreciation (or disapproval, for that matter) of something I’m offering which actually no one ever asked for. If some people want to do some translation, or comment on my work, fine. After the fact. A newborn book of Cebuano poems with translations (by the authors themselves or by someone else) into English (or Tagalog, for that matter) makes me quite uneasy. What, some sort of homage to a supposedly “superior” culture? Sorry, but it smacks of inferiority complex to me. When fine original Cebuano poems are accompanied by incompetent translations, it’s like being both a vaginal and an anal exertion—a healthy newborn twinned with a full-bodied turd. When fine original Cebuano poems are accompanied by equally fine, even better, English translations, one starts to wonder: Traditore, whence comest thou? Which is which? Has the curse of Babel now sadly metastasized into this? To paraphrase some critic, translation—as with interpretation, commentary, or condemnation—is always post-coital.

Any future literary projects?

In addition to “Ang Musimos Mismo,” I have this quasi-academic tome of translations and adaptations of favorite random poems originally written in other languages. Oh, I fancy myself a competent translator by the way, ha ha. About this work—which is more than a decade old, and to which I’ve since added a few items—I’d be exuberant, then dejected, then enthusiastic, then disgusted, and so on. Now I feel confident, but I don’t know how long this feeling is going to last.