Released 29 November 2024 // Poetry Pamphlet // 51 pages
‘Alton Melvar M Dapanas uses the corporealities of the dili ingon nato or ‘those not like us,’ creatures that haunt the folk and horror mythos of the Philippine archipelago, to express the violence and eros that accompany longing and melancholy. These poems are seductive and sacrilegious, acting as a conduit for all the kaleidoscopic emotions that exist in the void. A vigorous reworking of what was once deemed unholy. This is idolatry for all our lost memories.’
– Therese Estacion, Filipino-Canadian author of Firecracker Awards-shortlisted Phantompains: Poems
Mourning Mebu'yan - Alton Melvar M Dapanas
Alton Melvar M Dapanas (they/them), essayist, poet, and translator from the southern Philippines, is the author of M of the Southern Downpours (Australia: Downingfield Press, 2024), In the Name of the Body: Lyric Essays (Canada: Wrong Publishing, 2023), and Towards a Theory on City Boys: Prose Poems (UK: Newcomer Press, 2021). Their works—published from South Africa to Japan, France to Singapore, and translated into Chinese and Swedish—appeared in World Literature Today, BBC Radio 4, The White Review, Sant Jordi Festival of Books, and the anthologies Infinite Constellations (University of Alabama Press) and He, She, They, Us: Queer Poems (Pan Macmillan UK). They currently serve as editor-at-large at Asymptote and assistant nonfiction editor at Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature. Formerly with Creative Nonfiction magazine, they’ve been nominated to The Best Literary Translations and twice to the Pushcart Prize for their lyric essays. Find more at https://linktr.ee/samdapanas.