WRITING CAN be about having fun, and saying the message later. That’s what Lawrence Ypil, English Lecturer, wanted to do when he wrote his essay titled “Impermanent Residencies.”
His essay won second place in the essay category of the Philippines Literary Free Press Awards, one of the oldest award giving bodies in the country for English literature.
Every year, the free press would go through the works that the magazine Philippines Free Press published for a year, and choose works that would receive recognition.
Ypil was awarded August 27 at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Makati.
Rediscovery
“Impermanent Residencies” is one of the first long essays Ypil had written. It is a memoir of sorts, a coming-of-age essay, which encourages readers to ask the question: what happens after we identify ourselves as either gay or straight?
Ypil said that he had been writing poetry for over 10 years, when he found himself interested once more in writing using the essay form.
I wanted to do something different. I think more than the message, it was really more of a certain style of writing the essay that I wanted to try out,” said Ypil. “I approached it saying, I want to do something with the essay, as a form, and play around with it.”
Get lost
“As a writer, I’ve always found it fun, when you hit the page and you didn’t know where it was going to lead you,” said Ypil.
Ypil said that when he taught in class, he would always tell his students that to write an essay means to try out an idea, and get lost in it.
Ypil’s student Patricia Angela Magno (III AB Lit Eng) described Ypil as a teacher who is “frank and a bit scattered, with a lot of ambition, and a spectrum of interests.”
Magno also said that one lesson she had learned from Ypil when it came to writing was simply, “Hit the page.”
Many writers tend to forget that there is a deep pleasure in writing, said Ypil. “Sometimes we write very serious things. But I think one of the powerful things about literature is there’s a deep pleasure in it,” he said.
“That’s what keeps me writing, and eventually that’s what should keep everyone writing I think. A certain sense of pleasure.”
“A growing fondness”
Ypil said that he felt glad that he was recognized for this essay, given that it was one of his very first long essays.
“We got to witness his growing fondness for essays ever since he taught our class, and for him to be recognized for it is pretty fantastic,” said Magno.
Ypil hopes that his work would inspire people to write essays more.
“I hope it gets more people to try out the essay more, because there are things in that form that the poem or the novel can’t do,” said Ypil.
Ypil is currently working on a book of poems, which he hopes will come out next year. He is also planning to compile into a book all the columns and short essays that he writes for Sun Star Cebu, a local newspaper in Cebu.
