September 28, 2021
In Memoriam
BIENVENIDO L. LUMBERA
11 April 1932 - 28 September 2021
Prof. Bienvenido L. Lumbera passed away on 28 September 2021. He was 89 years old.
He advocated for the intellectualization of the Filipino language. In the 1960s, he was a prime mover of the Bagay movement, which began a new period for Tagalog poetry—one that reconciled the poet and the world outside him. In 1993, he received the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature, and Creative Communications Arts for “asserting the central place of the vernacular tradition in framing a national identity for modern Filipinos.” The Philippine government named him a National Artist for Literature in 2006.
In Kritika Kultura, as an author and a member of its international board of editors, he published the following articles and creative works: “Ang Paanyaya ni Bush Kay Gloria” (with an accompanying translation into English by Charlie S. Veric) (KK 3); “Bending English for the Filipino Stage” (KK 7); “Ang Ateneo sa Kasaysayan Ko Bilang Guro ng Panitikan” (with an accompanying translation into English by Charlie S. Veric) (KK 10); “Philippine Theater in Confinement: Breaking Out of Martial Law” (KK 14); and “Not Language Alone: Translation and Culture” (KK 23).
May he rest in peace.
Prof. Bienvenido L. Lumbera delivering a lecture in the Traveling Texts conference in 2012.
