By Maynard James B. Fernandez
Joining the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, or Palanca Awards, was a bad experience for me (describing it as horrifying would be an exaggeration). I submitted two stories to its Regional Languages Division in two non-consecutive years and I did not win. Perhaps the declared winners in those years were better writers than me.
After failing my second attempt at attaining the Palanca glory, I stopped submitting entries to the annual literary tilt, which surely is a mecca of established and emerging writers who are competitive and tireless seekers of recognition.
For sure, participating writers are not after the prizes. Betting on Super Lotto every day would give a struggling writer a slim chance at raking in millions.
As for me, it was both. I was seeking approval from established writers and I was daydreaming of winning the prize — even just the third prize — and using it to pay off my debts. Since I did not win on two occasions, I had to rely on my meager income to clear my financial IOUs.
But as time went by, my appetite for literary competitions disappeared. It is not that I am afraid to lose again — I am not a sore loser. It is just that I came to realize that there is no joy in writing a short story at night as if the unknown judges were hovering like ghosts above me.
Also, my love affair with writing short stories has been overpowered by writing poetry in my mother tongue. And it has been years now that I have been obsessed with poetry’s serendipitous nature. Poetic inspirations can hit like lightning, and they come in any shape or size — like a woman fixing her ponytail or a cat on a leash outside a sari-sari store.
Okay, I have written six paragraphs already about the Palanca Awards, short stories and poetry, and these passages include multiple em dashes that could lead editors to doubt this piece as being written by ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Grok, DeepSeek or MetaAI.
Kidding aside, my real objective here is to question the literary competition’s organizers’ failure to expand the Regional Languages Division. The term “regional languages” emits a tone of condescension. Tell me, are languages that aren’t English or the Tagalog-based Filipino not part of the national language? The Philippine language is a myriad of languages and it does not solely belong to English or Tagalog.
Since its launch in the late 1990s, the division only has three categories — short stories in Cebuano, Hiligaynon and Ilokano. There are other major languages in the Philippines that are not included in the division such as Waray, Kapampangan and Bikolano, to name a few.
A friend of mine who had won multiple Palancas by joining one of the Regional Languages Division’s categories told me that the winning pieces in the English Division are called “masterpieces” by the emcees. There were no adjectives for the winning pieces in the Regional Languages Division.
In effect, the emcees gave the impression that the English Division, or the language itself, is far superior to Filipino and the “regional languages.”
This question has been bugging me for years: why can the Palanca Awards organizers not create Cebuano Division, Hiligaynon Division and Ilokano Division with multiple categories aside from the short story?
It would be stupid of me to answer my own question, but please, dear reader, indulge me. Perhaps the obvious answer to my question is the financials of the organization. The organizers cannot afford to dismantle the Regional Languages Division and create new divisions with multiple categories.
If that’s the case, it would be better to decenter the Palanca Awards’ obvious focus on the English Division. The organizers could just retain one or two categories every year. When one opens this link, https://palancaawards.com.ph/list-of-categories/, the English Division sits atop the literary competition’s food chain.
It has been nearly three decades since the launch of the Regional Languages Division and seeing it disintegrate and morph into new language divisions with multiple categories would be good news for writers from outside Manila.
Palanca Awards’ organizers should have balls to push the English language to the margins. They know that writers from the provinces can also express themselves, critique their communities and send messages (hopeful or otherwise) through short stories for children, essays, poetry, poetry written for children, one-act plays, full-length plays and novels.
If that happens, perhaps I could join in the poetry category of my mother tongue. But, then again, literary competitions do not excite me anymore.
