04 June 2014 - Award-winning Filipina poet Dinah Roma launched her new book, “Naming the Ruins,” in conjunction with the Sydney Writers’ Festival recently held in Sydney from May 19 to 25. The book is published by Australian publishing company, Vagabond Press.

Ms. Roma is also the author of two awarded poetry collections, A Feast of Origins (UST, 2004)  and Geographies of Light (UST, 2011). She currently teaches at the Department of Literature of the De la Salle University in Manila, Philippines.

Ms. Roma informed Philippine Consul General Anne Jalando-on Louis that she is honoured to be the lone Philippine participant in the Sydney Writers’ Festival this year and to have the opportunity to read one of her poems, “The First Hour,” during the festival. The poem is in memory of the victims of Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) in the Philippines and moved many who attended the reading.

Filipino-Australian novelist, poet and academic Melinda Bobis describes Ms. Roma’s poems in Naming the Ruins as “earthy and transcendent” and “renders the reader breathless.”

Melinda and Dinah participated in a forum on poetry writing during the festival.

The Consul General congratulated Ms. Roma on the publication of her latest collection of poems and wished her even more success in the international arena. END