Literature has many flags

QWERTYMAN

- JOSE DALISAY

Filipinos still caught up in the aftermath of the midterm elections, a topic of interest to a limited few, but I'm bringing it up this week because it's important enough for larger reasons.

The Philippines will be Guest of Honor (GOH) at this October's Frankfurt Buchmesse (FBM), the world's oldest and largest book fair. Being GOH means that the Philippines — its literature, culture, history and politics — will be foregrounded in Frankfurt, through the dozens of writers, thousands of books and the many exhibits and presentations that will be brought over to the FBM, through the combined efforts of the National Book Development Board (NBDB) and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA), among other organizations.

Much of the groundwork for this initiative, which began well before the pandemic, was laid by Sen. Loren Legarda, the principal advocate of arts and culture in the Senate. GOH status is an honor given every year to a different country, but it doesn't come free; the project involves hundreds of millions of pesos, which its proponents see as a worthwhile investment in raising the global profile of the Philippines through its culture and expanding the international market for Philippine books and authors. The past two years have seen intensive efforts made by the NBDB and the Philippine GOH Committee to prepare the program, select the delegates and arrange the logistics for our historic participation in October at the FBM.