Noeme Grace C. Tabor-Farjani

This review was originally published in the Full Stop Quarterly “Tender Tongues,” edited by Natália Affonso. Subscribe at our Patreon page to get access to this and future issues, also available for purchase here.

Noeme Grace C. Tabor-Farjani, whom I fondly call Miss P, began her writing journey in writing courses and workshops put together by a local coterie I had spearheaded almost a decade ago. Even then, she was one of those bright-eyed ones, full of urgent questions and something undeniable to say. It is no surprise that she has become exactly who she was meant to be: a poet achieving heights uncommon in our small hometown. A debut author in her 40s, like so many brilliant women writers, she has since broken into poetry magazines and secured artist grants across the globe, from the United Kingdom to New Zealand, from Hong Kong to Lebanon.

Fated resets eventually moved us on, as itinerant often are: I to a Pacific-facing coastal town and then to a city of mountains, and Miss P to the Libyan capital of Tripoli, the homeland of her husband. Our old haunts, by the eastern suburbia’s coast, in a local bookshop, at a Divisoria roadside stall serving siomai and gulaman, transformed into exchanges over email and Facebook. We wrote to each other, of astrology, the selves we abandoned in transit, and the endless pursuit of craft. When death plagued me, she answered with a poem: “There is no more reprise,/ no returning to some refrain,/ only a battle cry for breath,/ for air, for space, all ending/ in a sob. And a few victories/ for embraces done, apologies,/ forgiveness, and thank yous.”

The years, I must say, have been kind to us as servants of the writing craft. Behind my back, she refers to me as her editor, as if I were the Ancient One. But in truth, I never saw her as my Doctor Strange. To me, she has always been my equal, my friend, despite the two decades between us. Ours is a friendship that is enabling at its worst and nourishing at its best, tried and tested by time and distance, and celestial bodies.

From April to May 2024, I corresponded with Miss P over Facebook and email, in a conversation that spans language and gender, geography and literary genre.

Alton Melvar M. Dapanas: In The Canon of Early Filipino Poetry in English (1991), the feminist scholar-anthologist Edna Zapanta-Manlapaz argued compellingly against what she termed the “man-made canon.” She built her case on a foundation of lived experience, textual evidence from anthologies and prizes, and even confessions of the era’s male literary gatekeepers. For instance, the Cebuano poet Cornelio Faigao once half-confessed, half-boasted that, “All creative work that reaches the public has to pass through editorial winnowing.” From this, Zapanta-Manlapaz concluded that, “The absence/lack of women’s poetry from the literary history of Filipino poetry in English during the first half of the century is an act of erasure that involves patriarchal responsibility, if not conspiracy.” 

We see this pattern of silence and subversion echoed in women’s poetry across other cultures, from classical China to late medieval Germany, and from the Bedouins to the contemporary Caribbean. As a writer who has positioned yourself, thoughtfully, as an “outsider” to local literary circles, I’m keen to hear your perspective: Do you find that Zapanta-Manlapaz’s claims about erasure and patriarchal responsibility still resonate powerfully today?

Noeme Grace C. Tabor-Farjani: I believe we’ve come a long way from an era of necessary subversion into one of high visibility. So much has shifted since the last century. We’re in another “new age,” one where women writers are not without support, thanks to the persistent, loud grind of our ancestors who placed both their work and their personalities into the public sphere. That long revolt, waged through consistent creation and presence in a male-dominated arena, has ultimately granted women not just entry and a seat at the table, but an equally stable and expansive circle of their own.

This is feminism at its best, I should say, though of course only in places where the ideology thrives, or is at least welcomed. Yet, its most profound impact on women writers today often feels less like a present-tense force and more like a pivotal memory, a series of historical moments we recall with gratitude.

What I mean is that despite the expansion of our global literary landscapes into more open, inclusive spaces for women of every age, ethnicity, and gender, a certain gatekeeping persists. I find this necessary, in a way, to maintain a balance. We may be a far cry from the overt patriarchy and prejudice of the past, but these “exclusive spaces” provide us with choices and allow us to consciously position ourselves as writers. Consequently, an “act of erasure” was never truly possible for Filipino women’s poetry in English, nor for the literature of other cultures. We cannot defy the instinctual nature of women to create: to receive, to conceive, to struggle, and to deliver.

This has certainly been true in my own experience. Literary circles abroad have been graciously receptive to my work. They function like an ocean: vast and open to all author-ships. I’ve learned that these international circles often long for stories from uncharted landscapes of national history. They seek poetry that is uniquely personal yet collective, that gives authentic voice to traditions of race, faith, or politics through the distinct lenses of gender and socio-economic placement.

This engagement has broadened my perspective. It has enabled me to firmly uphold my own personal framework of values as a poet and prose writer, no matter how alien or unknown those values might seem to a foreign readership. I am glad to have emerged as a writer in this specific age, to have the privilege of enjoying the freedoms our predecessors fought for. Admittedly, the old patterns of silence and subversion still linger, their rhythm of fear dictating the steps of some women. But we know, from time immemorial, that women will not be forever silenced. We have always been, and will always be, visible, pushing our narratives through, in any language we wish to use.

Your prose chapbook Letters from Libya (2018) excavates a personal history that is both intimate and expansive. It chronicles the life of a woman and mother navigating wartime trauma, but also of a woman perpetually trying to find her place in the world. The work is informed by this sense of outsiderness, of existing in the in-between. You have lived, and returned, to Libya as an ajnabiya, a foreigner. Yet, your position is a uniquely liminal one. While there are thousands of migrant Filipino workers in Libya, your life is distinct from theirs. You are married to a Libyan national and are raising half-Libyan, half-Filipino children. I recall a conversation from years ago where you shared, “I never belonged anywhere.” Could you elaborate what this state of “unbelonging” means to you? How has this liminality shaped your identity, and how did you channel this theme to permeate the chapbook?

Looking back on our second return to Libya twelve years ago, which I now see as the second of three distinct returns, I recognize how a sense of “unbelonging” strategically placed me on a safe middle ground. It cast me as a mediator, an invisible witness, and ultimately, a courier of stories. This unbelongingness was an essential, if agonizing, part of finding a home within a jumble of identities. I’ve come to see myself as a diplomat for the displaced, the isolated, the alienated: the localized foreigner, the adopted and enculturated seeker. Even the delusions I have about myself, and my awareness of them, afforded me a kind of immunity to resistance. I’m not sure if this means a detachment from reality, but it has, at least, allowed me to retain my dignity, peace, and joys.

I would outline my life in Libya through these stages of return.

The first was in 2008, when I set foot in Libya for the first time as a relatively young mother of two boys: a toddler and an infant. My husband’s family welcomed us with a grand party, really a series of feasts, and I fell in love with them instantly. Yet that warmth couldn’t match the severity of the culture shock and isolation I experienced. We returned to my home country after just over a year.

After earning my master’s degree in 2012, we decided to go back. I had always wanted to work here like the other OFWs (Overseas Filipino Workers). But even with employment as a foreign worker, I didn’t become part of the broader OFW community, largely due to the demands of motherhood and my role as a foreign wife. Between tending to my children, spending time with my Libyan family, and a pregnancy with my fourth child, I had little time for community gatherings. Still, I developed deep friendships with fellow ajnabiyas, foreign wives of Libyan nationals, who were also colleagues.

This unbelongingness wasn’t caused by a lack of acceptance from others. It stemmed from my own need for a distinct identity to emerge, and from the palpable dissimilarities in values, beliefs, and perceptions between myself and those around me. In fact, during the civil war in 2014, the event that precipitated our second return to the Philippines, I never felt more supported and loved, even though our decision to leave saddened my Libyan family and upset my father-in-law. We found temporary shelter in my sister-in-law’s home and in the apartment of an OFW friend. There was great comfort, too, in the constant exchange of calls and messages among foreign colleagues and fellow ajnabiyas, all of us checking on one another.

Actually, the word ajnabiya once held a uniquely Libyan meaning, distinct from the standard Arabic ajnabi. It referred specifically to countries located at Libya’s “side,” such as Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, Nigeria, Chad, and Sudan. Derived from aljanib (which means the side of an arm, an extremity, or a direction), its connotation was closer to a “part-of-ness” than an “otherness.” In this older usage, those from outside this specific geographic sphere were called by their nationalities, not grouped with those who lived, quite literally, beside them. It’s a nuance that has since faded, as Libyans began to use the Arabic term more broadly to generalize all foreigners as adjnabis.

The last nine years, living in the Philippines, were a period of reconnecting with my roots and discovering my authentic self. Finding my voice felt like preparation for this third return to Libya, a journey I began only after I had fully embraced my “otherness” in my own country.

I stepped onto Libyan soil for the third time in 2023 as a mother of four (two teenage boys, a teenage daughter with special needs, and a ten-year-old boy) and as a wife of nineteen years to a Libyan man. My mind was occupied not with whether people would like me, as I had mused fifteen years prior, but with a different question: How would I create a home for myself and my children in this battle-scarred country? The unbelongingness that lurked in my past narratives has morphed into a kind of welcomingness, in the sense that I am now the one who chooses what and whom I let into my space.

This time, I’ve been able to join a community of OFW teachers from my sons’ school. I still keep in touch with my fellow adjnabiya friends, though some have long since left the country and never returned. My concerns have shifted, fundamentally, from a need to belong to a sense of responsibility, for the things and the people that belong to me, and for the stories I carry.

Image by Sally Chen

Your two poetry collections The Gospel of Grace (Newcomer Press, 2021) and Inspecting Wastelands (Ukiyoto, 2023) serve as many things at once: they are elegies for bygone lovers, a quarantine diary, lullabies for children, a dream journal, evocations to ancestors, and letters to grieving friends. I’m struck by the recurrence of seascapes, and by the kind of wordplay that often privileges lyricism over literal sense which creates a space for catharsis that feels both urgent and personal. Your work blurs the lines between waking life and dreamland, the fleeting and the malignant. Yet, for all this ethereal quality, the poems feel grounded in specific places: the seaside house of your childhood in Cagayan de Oro, or a terrace in Tripoli overlooking a water well and a garden of date palms. Could you walk us through the poetic process, artistic influences, and creative underpinnings that shaped your first two books?

I work with Presence, and I capitalize that ‘P’ because it feels less like a process and more like a person. I once believed my primary material was memory, but I’ve come to understand that memory is inert without this Presence. My process often begins with a kind of preconditioning, a quiet selfpersuasion that I am, in fact, ordained to write, and so I must. This allows me to enter a zone where I can channel what wants to appear on the page. It’s an intertwining of memory work and a deep mindfulness of the present moment. It’s an observation of the world outside the self, and the memories that are inevitably swept into its current.

Artistically, I draw from a well of powerful, authentic voices. I admire the authenticity of Anne Lamott, the metaphors of Louise Glück and Ada Limón, the realism of Charles Bukowski, and the magic of Mary Oliver. But my influences are not solely literary. I am equally shaped by my ancestors: my grandmothers, their sisters, and their mothers. I feel the weight of their experiences, and conversely, I imagine the gaze of my children’s daughters and granddaughters. What would they make of my memory if I failed in my responsibility to this passion? In many ways, my work is an alchemy that transforms that very guilt and fear into inspiration.

As for my creative underpinnings? At its core, I would have to say it’s grief. It is the feeling of carrying the world on my shoulders, a world that threatens to crumble into dust if I dare to lay it down. It is the soil of memory caked on my feet, soil that could turn to quicksand if I don’t diligently dig, shovel, and toss it onto the page. Sometimes, the impetus is a more urgent cry: the scream of an infant needing milk, the smell of a house on fire. In those moments, writing is a portal to another world, one that is closing fast, and I must hurry to enter.

Perhaps it is also my secret longings, I cannot be sure. I sometimes think artists are born with a built-in extra soul, one that has a natural tendency for the blues. Is it an inborn anointing? Or is it over-confidence, the sheer audacity to flatter myself? It might simply be the privilege of keeping my head in the clouds, in a realm where the rigid, podium-banging authorities of writers’ workshops do not exist.

That brings to mind the groupthink and exclusivity which can pervade local literary production. The bisexual Asian American essayist Julietta Singh, in No Archive Will Restore You (2018), writes powerfully of this dynamics, how what we fear and find alien, we exclude. Singh observes:

“The creation of the monster … is a way of crafting an outside so that a collective can imagine itself as bounded, cohesive, and impenetrable. The monster is a being who will not or cannot fit normally, whose existence makes others uncomfortable and who therefore must be shunned and exiled.”

Does that make me a monster? I don’t believe my existence makes others uncomfortable. If anything, I’m likely as insecure as anyone else. But really, does anyone still care about fitting into a specific literary circle?

Honestly, I feel comfortable having no formal background in creative writing or any experience with any “reputable” writers workshops in the Philippines. That isolation allowed me to waddle alone, satisfying my hunger to write better and to test the quality of my work and the limits of publication. It feels like the safest place to be, where no other voices are there to validate or invalidate me as a writer. It was my curiosity that ultimately dissolved the fear and insecurity, as the need to grow and develop my craft overtook the need for acceptance. While my works have only faced initial scrutiny from a small local writers clinic and a few close writer-friends, their feedback has been both kind and brutally honest. And the editors from around the world who have been so gracious with their blurbs for my collections have shown me that I do, in fact, belong somewhere. That place is among the solitary and quiet, who have chosen to obscure the wounded writer in favor of the work itself. 

A line from Filipino lesbian feminist writer Jhoanna Lynn Cruz’s PhD dissertation perfectly captures my own experience. She wrote:

“… those who were not granted legitimacy for some reason or other (or for no reason)—we had to learn to fend for ourselves. We had to strive to carry on if we wanted to gain any success as writers, not just by continuing to write, but by creating our own opportunities—by putting ourselves at the centre of our writing endeavors. That is, looking at our writing as independent of the validation of the system, and even rejecting it by refusing to perpetuate it.”

The same is true for getting published. I had to wade out of a narrow stream and brave an ocean of possibilities beyond my country, thanks to you who helped me submit to international journals. After a series of acceptances to journals and magazines, around eight in the five months following my first publication, I was still not convinced I could actually do it. I told myself these were small journals, perhaps for beginners. The fact that these were followed by publications in paying journals and charity anthologies did little to lessen my insecurity. My self-doubt was well concealed behind every social media post promoting a journal or sharing my published work. That nagging question of my worthiness remained.

I suppose this stems from stories I’ve heard about how Filipino authors uphold such high standards, that receiving a fellowship in a writer’s workshop is like a camel passing through the eye of a needle, and that there’s little chance of being published in literary journals without having attended one or being recommended by someone else. “Who am I to suddenly emerge out of nowhere on the international landscape?” was the imposter’s constant whisper. I try hard to counter it every time with: “How dare I dishonor the decisions of these brilliant readers and editors by downplaying the works they chose to publish?” At the very least, my pieces have found their rightful homes in journals across the globe.

Speaking of countries and homelands, you were born in Jaro, Iloilo and continue to write in Hiligaynon, alongside English and the Binisaya we use in Cagayan de Oro. In your body of work, you’ve written about the matriarchal figures of your family who still reside there. This brings me to an interesting point about Iloilo’s place in our literary history. It was also the figures of two foundational figures in Philippine Anglophone essay: Alejandrina Santiago, who wrote “A Call,” what may be the first personal essay in English, published in the Philippine Review in 1918, and Alfredo Q. Gonzalez, whose The Call of Heights (1937) is arguably the second single-author collection of personal essays. And while this is a more remote connection, it resonates with me that our own patron saint in Cagayan de Oro, Saint Augustine of Hippo, wrote what is considered the West’s first important memoir, the Confessions (397-398 CE).

I am, in equal measure, a pure Ilongga and a full-blooded Kagay-anon. I’ve come to understand that the experiences and stories from these places have claimed me as their writer, rather than the other way around. It feels like a transaction forged in a place the writer cannot escape. While our devotion to place may vary, we can never truly separate story from it. Both Iloilo and Cagayan de Oro have laid an indelible claim to my heart. The memories and inherited narratives they’ve given me simply refuse to leave.

Iloilo is a place that abounds with history, culture, and deeply held traditions. Whenever the women in my family gather, it becomes a feast of stories. I was only five years old when we left Iloilo for Cagayan de Oro, yet I have always held dear the tales of my grandmothers, their aunts, and their mother, eagerly awaiting their retelling with every family visit. A central drive in my work has been to solidify this oral tradition from my matriarchs. These stories came to me directly from my mother and from my grandmother’s sister, who passed on a year after she told them to me for the last time in 2012. I suspect I am the last grandchild to have been enchanted by these narratives while still possessing clear recollections of the specific people, places, and things within them. I feel a profound responsibility to preserve the rich lessons, the sweetness, and the unique humor they contain.

Cagayan de Oro, by contrast, is the source of all my firsthand stories. I have been an obsessive recorder of ordinary daily life in journals and diaries since I was thirteen. My relationship with this city is one of documented immediacy. Yet, the true magic lies in how the places I write about seem to infuse the mundane with a sense of the extraordinary.

Your writings have found home in feminist magazines, journals, and anthologies across the North Atlantic, and you move within BIWOC (Black, Indigenous, and Women of Color) artistic spaces. Yet, you’ve shared with me that you don’t personally identify as a feminist. This resonates with the skepticism found in some Filipino women’s movements toward the term itself, alongside their urgent call for more culture-specific strands of feminism, or perhaps more appropriately, “feminisms.” For instance, Allyson Goce Tintiangco-Cubales, in Pinay Power: Peminist Critical Theory (2005), proposed ‘Pinayism,’ a framework honoring the 1937 victory of Filipino women in the suffrage movement, which was one of the first in Southeast Asia. At the same time, you subscribe to a personal philosophy of “non-resistance” and identify as a pacifist. How do you reconcile the desire for women to create a “room of one’s own,” to borrow from Virginia Woolf, with the stance that chooses not to participate in the collective struggle?

I consider myself a gentle warrior. Having experienced war and its catastrophic effects, not just on a country’s physical landscape, but on the collective, psychosocial condition, the deep trauma, I’ve learned there is profound power in stepping back. In retreat, rest, and reflection, we find the clarity for thoughtful, deliberate action. My work is a representation of this collective struggle for peace. Yet, to tell these stories, to write them in a “room of my own,” is a struggle in itself. It is a process of nurturing wounds, not merely nursing them, until they are slowly transmuted into wisdom. For me, the act of sharing these stories is my essential participation in our collective healing.

This perspective is why I’ve hesitated to identify as a feminist. Too often, its contemporary ideology paints a picture of a warrior woman, brandishing her sword in a relentless fight for her rights. In that stampede, I fear a different kind of feminine power is being crushed. If I confidently sashay in public, embracing my true, authentic being (my religious identity, my personal values) only to have another woman question it or try to “rescue” me from what she perceives as repression, then I must ask: Who is the true feminist between us?

This is why I find Mina Roces’s idea of the “women’s movement” more apt. It feels more genuinely pro-women, creating space for the inherent contradictions of our experiences. How else can we reconcile one woman’s right to wear her hijab as a core part of her identity with another woman’s desire to see that same right abolished? If we are to claim the right to be whoever we want to be, we must begin within our own circles: by welcoming differences, embracing diversity, and allowing a healthy exchange of views to foster deeper understanding.

I am guided by the Libyan peace activist Zahra Langhi, who speaks of the need to “act as agents of compassion and mercy.” She calls for a feminine discourse that honors and implements mercy over revenge, collaboration over competition, and inclusion over exclusion. She describes an alchemy of peace, an intertwining of both feminine and masculine perspectives. And she offers a beautiful, profound insight: that the Arabic word for peace, salam, is the word of the All-merciful God, Raheem. This word raheem shares its root with rahem, or womb, symbolizing a maternal feminine that encompasses all of humanity. Just as the womb envelops the embryo, the divine matrix of compassion nourishes all existence. As it is said, “My mercy encompasses all things,” and “My mercy takes precedence over my anger.”

This is the kind of feminism I believe the world needs today. It is a force that provides balance to an unstable world, not by resisting our destiny, but by tipping its scales decisively in favor of all that is good and true.

So, if feminism means the feminine tapping into her original nature, empowering other women by allowing absolute freedom of choice, in religion, in love, in family, in clothing, and providing support for what another deems a need… If it means a defiance of anything that dishonors the sacred feminine or hinders the full blossoming of a woman’s gifts… then, in this deepest sense, I am a feminist.

You are currently at work on two significant projects: what will be your third poetry collection, and your first full-length memoir. This new collection of poems specifically curates pieces about your third return to Libya. Could you speak to the dialogue unfolding between these two forthcoming books?

I was surprised to tally the volume of work I’ve produced since we arrived last March, all of it raw. By December, the count was roughly forty-three poems and around forty pages of essays, flash memoir, and letters. So, yes, we are now in the final phase of polishing what will become my third collection.

For a long time, I believed The Gospel of Grace would be the final book I’d ever publish, and that my second collection would never see the light of day. The difficulties we faced here, in logistics, in communication, felt insurmountable. But help always seems to arrive. Mine, specifically, has come from fellow writers like you who have kept faith in my work. This third poetry collection is a testament to that very phenomenon.

Its genesis was almost casual and you know that. I was confessing to you about this dry spell, the isolation, and the seeming impossibility of publishing from my current position here in Libya with such limited resources. Yet writing has a way of finding the writer soon after a commitment is forged, not by passion alone, but by the stubbornness of habit. It was also you who was struck by a line in one of my poems, calling it “a powerful metaphor.” That single observation became the catalyst, the reason I pursued this project in earnest.

As for the prose, my collection of essays and epistolary writings to friends remains in progress, with the hope that it will eventually cohere into a memoir.

Who is occupying your reading life at the moment? And for the aspiring women writers who see a kindred path in your own, particularly those who, like you, began publishing their significant work in their 40s, what essential advice would you offer?

It’s less about finding new books and more about re-reading, as I’m still navigating how to order them online from here. I had the foresight to bring a few cherished favorites with me: Ada Limón, Tess Gallagher, Joan Didion, Anne Lamott (though, I must confess, one of hers I couldn’t finish), and Zora Neale Hurston. I also rediscovered a small cache of books I’d left behind ten years ago by Ann Patchett, Mitch Albom, and Toni Morrison. After a year, I finally found a reliable online bookstore and acquired Paul Kalanithi’s memoir, Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere, and Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s Before the Coffee Gets Cold, which, to my surprise, was an Arabic translation, so that one remains unread. Just the other day, I ordered a few of the last English titles they had in stock: Mark Manson’s 2016 bestseller, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, and two more nonfiction works by Eric Jorgenson and Robin Sharma. I’m not sure I’ll ever find the time for them, however, as I’ve committed to re-reading three classics I borrowed from the school library where I work, two by Dickens and one by Louisa May Alcott. They’re due back in two weeks, so they have my immediate attention.

As for a writing regimen, I firmly believe there is no one-size-fits-all approach. The essential part is simply to show up, and to show up well. There should be no pressure for, or from, the things we love. Writing must remain a voluntary act of both will and passion. I’ve come to think the initial commitment one must have for this craft is not to writing itself, but to the self. It is a commitment to drawing joy from memory and comfort from meaningful experiences, those fragments of life that ask to be revealed on the page.

I was once a devout daily writer. But lately, I’ve noticed that with the brain fog that accompanies hormonal changes, there’s little point in sitting before a blank screen for hours, producing nothing. Even my daily journal has devolved into a repository for intrusive thoughts, which isn’t necessarily good writing. What was once an admirable habit had become a monotonous routine, and the joy was lost. I find the intention to write one good piece within a focused hour or two is a more fruitful goal, even if that only happens on a weekly basis. Ultimately, it depends on how deeply we are driven by the stories we wish to tell. For me, this love affair has become a lifelong commitment. 

Alton Melvar M. Dapanas (they/them) is an essayist, poet, and translator from the southern Philippines. 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), they have been published from South Africa to Japan, France to Singapore, and translated into Chinese, Damiá, and Swedish. Their writings have 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). Find more at https://linktr.ee/samdapanas.