Poet Niccolo Vitug culminates 20 years of writing poems with his new book ‘Enter Deeply’
Everything is going online today. Even books are becoming products of modern digitalization and there are benefits that come from that. But still, nothing beats having a physical book in your hand, smelling its fresh paper, and spending hours going through its every page. The latest to offer such experience is writer Niccolo Vitug with his new book titled “Enter Deeply.”
A collection of poems he has written over 20 years, “Enter Deeply” documents the life of the gay author, from the things he had seen and experienced to the people he had met along his journey. It presents narratives about sexuality and spirituality, as its synopsis suggests. But connecting the two worlds together is its mission of telling the truth.
“It is all about truth-telling,” Niccolo tells Manila Bulletin Lifestyle. “I hope that the books find companions who are into truth-telling.”
The launch of the book happened at such a remarkable time for the author. Officially released on June 30 at the Gener Cafe in Quezon City, it marked the end of a memorable Pride Month for Niccolo and the dawn of new political leadership. “Poets, writers, musicians, artists even have to be brave. We are part of this nation’s story. We may not have the upper hand, but we have our hearts,” he said during his speech.
In the book, the poems are dived into five section titles—“New by Breath and Moisture,” “Urge into Complexity,” “Something to Hold Onto,” “Song Behind the Leaves,” and “Where Sweetness Lies”—with the final section featuring a lengthy piece based on the story of Lorenzo Ruiz. Helping him with the book is visual artist Gian Carlo Moreno, who did the illustration for the book’s cover.
“Poetry is like saying something but also saying something else,” the author says. “Even as a kid, I was looking for meanings in small things and understanding them. Poetry, because of its nature, has irony.”
Prior to being published by the UP Press, Niccolo’s works have been a finalist for the Singapore Unbound organization’s 2020 Gaudy Boy Poetry Book Prize. One of its jury, poet Cyril Wong, described his works as “tender, fraught, and shard-like poems” that “do more than record the carnality, the almost unspeakable vulnerabilities and objections of thwarted desires, riddled with a remarkable longing that strains persistently against the skin of conventional religiosity to penetrate the realm of the metaphysical.”
Niccolo Vitug’s “Enter Deeply” is now available at the UP Press website and on Lazada and Shopee.
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