THE PHILIPPINE Center of International PEN (Poets, Playwrights, Essayists, Novelists) will host the launching of “Be Ye Steadfast. Poems of Carlomar Arcangel Daoana, Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta and Allan Justo Pastrana,” Sept. 24, 5 p.m., at Solidaridad Bookshop, 531 Padre Faura St., Ermita, Manila.

The collection is the eighth volume in Vagabond Press’ Asia Pacific Poetry Series. It is edited and introduced by Dinah Roma, with cover art by Mark Andy Garcia.

Vagabond, based in Tokyo and Sydney, is an independent literary publishing press which promotes new works by writers in Asia and the Pacific.

Daoana is the Palanca-winning author of four collections of poetry: “Loose Tongue, Poems: 2001-2013” (UST Publishing House or USTPH, 2014); “Clairvoyance” (USTPH, 2011), “The Fashionista’s Book of Enlightenment” (DBW, 2009); and “Marginal Bliss” (University of the Philippines Press, 2002).

Katigbak-Lacuesta, who has just won the grand poetry prize in the 2018 Palanca awards, is the author of “The Proxy Eros” (Anvil Publishing, 2008); “Burning Houses” (USTPH, 2013); and “Tropicalia: Poems and Translations” (in collaboration with Frances Cannon, Vagabond Press, 2016).

Pastrana has his first book of poems entitled “Body Haul” (USTPH, 2011), which won the 2013 Madrigal-Gonzalez Best First Book Award.

Roma in her introduction that international readers “would find in (the work of the three poets) a rich evocation of the country and nation that is the Philippines.”

The book launch is open to the public.

Call 2541086; e-mail [email protected].