THE Province of Pampanga will celebrate this month's Buwan ng Wika (Language Month) with its own (Day of the Kapampangan Language) on August 28.
Pampanga Governor Lilia Pineda will grace the occasion to be held at the Center for Kapampangan Studies, Holy Angel University.
Erlinda Cruz, head of the Pampanga Language Council (PLC), said the celebration started in 2008 with the Provincial Board (PB) Resolution 1193, designating the last Friday of August as Aldo ning Amanung Sisuan and creating the Language Council.
The Provincial Government of Pampanga, through the council, is co-sponsoring the event with the University and the Parnasong Kapampangan, the umbrella organization of various poets' groups in Pampanga and abroad.
Several US-based poets are expected to come home to join their local counterparts and attend the launching of two poetry books and the coronation of five new poets laureate, namely: Ma. Teresa Tolosa, Adora Ferrer, Ma. Teresa Evangelista, Anac ning Arenas, and Gaudencio Sagum, who is already a poet laureate after being crowned two weeks ago by Aguman Buklud Kapampangan, a local poets association.
US-based poet laureate Renato Alzadon, who was elected by his peers last year as the Ari ning Parnaso (King of Parnassus), will come home to perform the coronation rites.
The first book, published by the Parnasong Kapampangan, is Kasapunggul a Sampaga Volume II, a collection of the latest works of Alzadon and various poets here and abroad. This is a follow-up on Alzadon's first publication, also launched in the University in 2008.
The second book, co-published by the Language Council and the University, is Kawatasan: Obrang Poeta Laureado, an anthology of poems written by crowned poets laureate.
According to Robby Tantingco, director of the Center for Kapampangan Studies, the books are "a tribute to our underappreciated and mostly old and poor poets who deserve to have their works published, because they are truly a cultural treasure of this province."
"Pampanga is probably the only province where poets are still crowned as laureates and where they still choose among themselves their king," Tantingco said. "Those who go abroad bring with them this tradition and keep it alive there, and those who stay here try to propagate it among the youth, so there is hope indeed for the Amanung Sisuan." (Press Release)