Simeon Dumdum, Jr.

Simeon Dumdum, Jr. (born March 7, 1948) is a former Regional Trial Court Judge in Cebu City, The Philippines, and is a published poet. He once studied for the priesthood in Galway, Ireland, but left the seminary to take up law. After years of practicing law, he was appointed Regional Trial Court judge. He won prizes for his poetry, which he has published and read in the Philippines and abroad.

Early years

He was born in Balamban, Cebu, where he grew up and had his early schooling. He attended St. Francis Academy for his secondary education, and then went to St. Clement's College in Iloilo City, where he did a year of college. In Ireland, he went to Cluain Mhuire and University College, Galway.^[1]

Author/Awards

He has published eleven books - The Gift of Sleep (poems), Third World Opera (poems), Love in the Time of the Camera (essays), Selected Poems and New (poems), My Pledge of Love Cannot be Broken (essays), "Ah, Wilderness: A Journey through Sacred Time" (essays), "If I Write You This Poem, Will You Make It Fly" (poems), "To the Evening Star" (poems), "Eighty-four Words for Sorrow" (poems), "The Poet Learns to Dance (the Dancer Learns to Write a Poem)" (poems), and "Letter from Fatima" (poem). In 2001, he received the Gawad Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas Award for Poetry in English from the Unyon ng mga Manunulat sa Pilipinas (UMPIL). He won second and third prizes in the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for English poetry five times,^[2] and the Manila Critics Circle's National Book Award five times.^[3] In 2005, he received a medallion for writing the best decision in a criminal case, second level courts, in the Judicial Excellence Awards sponsored by the Supreme Court of the Philippines.^[4]

References

Additional reading

• Ypil, Lawrence L. (July 2003), "Representations of the Unconscious in Simeon Dumdum's The Gift of Sleep", Kritika Kultura (3) .
• Love Makes the World Go Round, excerpted from Love Gathers All: A Philippine-Singaporean Anthology of Poetry.