Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Written by Ian Rosales Casocot and Shakira Andrea Sison, this anthology of "literary smut," as its subtitle has it, is superior erotica. Both authors are seasoned writers and award winners, but we all know how easy it is to write badly about sex. Casocot avoids the pitfall deftly by experimenting in literary form. "Road Trip" is told backwards, from climax to set-up. "Tell Him" is written mostly through dialogue. "The Thank You Girl" is all foreplay--so, so tantalizing. The highlight of his section is surely his much-anthologized story "The Boys From Rizal Street," which acquires its sexiness through sameness and difference. The form of these stories serves the sex but it is also true that the sex inspires the form.

Weekly column for Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . Is there really a spirit of writing here, in Dumaguete, the sea-facing capital of the province of Negros Oriental, in the Philippines? My guide, fiction writer and heritage activist Ian Rosales Casocot, thinks so. He teaches creative writing at the oldest writing workshop in the country. He has seen many writers, new and established, discover that spirit in their time here. Yesterday I broke my dry spell in Asia and revised a poem that I had shelved. Silliman University, where Ian teaches, is the oldest private American university in Asia. It is a living part of the country's colonial history. As Ian wrote in his blog, when the victorious Americans took over from the Spanish, they imposed English on the country to transmit their values. Ian remembers having to speak English only in grade school. To enforce the rule, the students were made to play a "game" called Badge. Whoever forgot himself and spok...