UST moves inaugural Ophelia Dimalanta memorial lecture to February 2027

The November lecture was postponed due to “unforeseen contingencies.”

The inaugural memorial lecture honoring literary titan Ophelia Alcantara Dimalanta has been moved to February 2027 due to “unforeseen contingencies,” according to Ralph Galan, director of the University of Santo Tomas Center for Creative Writing and Literary Studies, which is organizing the event.

“Due to some unforeseen contingencies, the 1st Ophelia A. Dimalanta Memorial Lecture will be moved to February 2027,” Galan wrote in a Facebook post on Thursday, Oct. 15. He did not provide further details.

The lecture was originally scheduled for Nov. 14, from 1 PM to 4:30 PM, at the George S.K. Ty Function Hall B on the fourth floor of UST’s Buenaventura G. Paredes, O.P. Building.

Prof. Jose Wendell Capili, Ph.D., is set to deliver the lecture, presenting his paper, “Flowing Ecologies: Landscape, Ruin, and Renewal in Ophelia Dimalanta’s Poetics.”

Capili is the associate dean for public affairs at the UP Diliman College of Arts and Letters and heads the Commission on Higher Education’s Technical Panel for Literature. A former mentee of Dimalanta, he has served several times as a judge for the Palanca Awards.

Dimalanta was a distinguished Filipino poet, critic, playwright, and academic whose work and teaching influenced generations of Filipino writers. She served as founding director of the UST center from 1999 to 2010, when it was known as the Center for Creative Writing and Studies.

Throughout her career, she published books of poetry, literary criticism, drama, and prose, and edited several literary anthologies. Her poetry collections include Montage (1974), The Time Factor and Other Poems (1983), Flowing On (1990), Lady Polyester (1995), Love Woman (1998), and Passional (2002).

Literary scholar Ferdinand Lopez once described Dimalanta as the “high priestess of Philippine poetry in English” during the postwar period. Her fluid, musical language and sensual lyricism helped establish her as a distinctive voice in Philippine literature.

Dimalanta received the Gawad Balagtas for poetry in 1990 and the Southeast Asian Writers Award in 1999.