2025 Maningning Miclat Poetry Competition accepts entries May 15-31

The Maningning Miclat Art Foundation, Incorporated (MMAFI) announces the holding of the 2025 Maningning Miclat Poetry Competition and that it will accept entries online from May 15 to 31, via maningningpoetry@gmail.com.

The poetry competition consists of two divisions — Filipino and English. An entry must consist of at least eight but not more than 12 poems. Authors may join all the divisions but can submit only one entry in every division. All entries should be original in every language and not a translation of another entry. “Pangarap at Pag-asa” (“Dream and Hope”) is the theme for this year’s competition.

Maningning Miclat, for whom the award is named, was a poet of three languages, prize-winning visual artist, published essayist and author, and translator/interpreter. She passed away at age 28 in 2000.

In her honor, MMAFI, formed in 2001, has been organizing activities aimed at encouraging creativity and recognizing, awarding, and nurturing outstanding and talented young poets and artists 28 years old — the same age when Maningning passed on— and younger. Alternately, poetry and painting competitions are held: poetry during odd-numbered years and painting during even-numbered years.

Grand winners in the divisions of the poetry competition will be awarded P28,000 cash prize each, together with a Julie Lluch sculpture trophy.

The grand winners and the 2nd and 3rd Prize for each division will receive copies of the books:

• Voice from the Underworld (Maningning C. Miclat, Anvil, 2000, 2002)
• Fairground: A Literary Feast (Edited by Gémino H. Abad & Alma Cruz Miclat, MMAFI & Erehwon, 2014)
• Soul Searchers & Dreamers: Artists’ Profiles and Soul Searchers and Dreamers, Volume II (Alma Cruz Miclat, MMAFI & Erehwon, HB, 2015 & 2020 respectively)
• #Rajisms (Maharadya Miclat-Janssen, MMAFI & Erehwon, 2021)
• Mario I. Miclat’s Memorial Set of his last three books
  • Kailan Diwata at 70+ na Tula, Hundred Flowers, Hundred Philosophies, and 21 West 4th
    Street (MMAFI, FIT, UP Office of the Chancellor & LIKHAAN, 2021, HB), and
  • Ningning at Liwanag: Antolohiya ng 10 Nagwagi sa Gawad Maningning Miclat sa
    Tula [2003-2021] (MMAFI & Erehwon with NBDB Publication Grant, 2023, HB).

For more information on the rules of the contest and other information, visit Maningning Miclat, Artist Page on Facebook.

The names of the winners and members of the the board of judges shall be announced in the 2025 Maningning Miclat Poetry Awards and launching of a coffee table book edition of Mario I. Miclat’s Secrets of the Eighteen Mansions with an introduction in Filipino and English by National Artist Virgilio S. Almario, in September 2025.

The book, longlisted in the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2009, was first published by Anvil Publishing in September 2010 with reprint in January 2011. The 15th anniversary edition of the book will be published by Erehwon Artworld Corporation. – Rappler.com