Guest Speaker Dr. Alegra Visaya

Eric Dulay
IP 411
IP 411 is a great class to see good writings that people have done over the years. Whether it is a sad story, love story, happy story it doesn’t matter. The fact is we students get to see a good insight to the writers mind. It is an inspiration that can project us forward in our studies. By having Dr. Alegra Visaya as our guest speaker, we can understand the experiences that she has gone through and we can understand these processes and use it in our future.
Dr. Visaya first talked about her childhood and her experiences through out her years. She was born from a Chinese father and an Ilokano mother. She lived in China the first couple of years in her life and later moved back to the Philippines with her mother. She first got involved in writing with the Youth Grinder, later in college she became more involved and started to read poetry from Edger Allen Poe and pieces like Oh Captain My Captain. She started to get the process of writing poetry because her thought was that she wasn’t doing it right. In the truth she was actually doing fine. She later got involved with Banawag and joined GOMEIL. Her first poetry that she wrote was called Identity. She realized by the age of 55 that she wanted to write in Ilokano. She ended having Stones of Many Past published in Banawag.
I enjoy that fact that she was very humble in her explanations of writing. She always took the time to look at her surroundings as inspirations in her writings. She used the example of looking up into the night sky and finding something that gives her meaning to what she is seeing. I took that as a very good inspiration to always look at something and making it unique in its own way. She also mention about wanting to write about things that people don’t really look at everyday. I also thought that it was cool that she looked at Edger Allen Poe. I know that Poe was a person that looked at the darker side of poetry. This type of poetry is uniquely different because it is a side that many people don’t like touching if your easily depressed. She also mention about Oh Captain My Captain. I remember reading this in my English class in high school. if I remember right it deals with the death of a President. Dr. Visaya is really interesting as a person and as a writer.
Overall, I enjoyed her visit and giving us an overview of a life as a writer. It doesn’t matter where or how a person gets their own inspiration, it is how that person can relate and put it into words.