?Mostly in Monsoon Weather,? the third collection of award-winning poet Marne L. Kilates, will be launched on Nov. 7 at 6 p.m., at the Roof Deck Gallery of Villanueva Law Offices, CC Castro Building on Timog Avenue, Quezon City.

Published by the University of the Philippines Press, ?Mostly in Monsoon Weather? has been nominated to the 2008 National Book Awards of the Manila Critics Circle and the National Book Development Board.

The launch will be hosted by art and literature patron Redem Villanueva and the Unyon ng mga Manunulat sa Pilipinas (UMPIL), of which Kilates is a board member.

Leading artists will have a sketching session and poets will sing ?Salinawit? ? Filipino translations of classical standards?led by poet and Salinawit pioneer Pete Lacaba and novelist Charlson Ong after the launch.

Kilates is a three-time Palanca Awards winner, has won National Book Awards for his poetry and translation, and was the winner of the 1998 SEA (Southeast Asia) Write Award given by the Thai royalty.

Kilates? two other books are ?Children of the Snarl & Other Poems? (Aklat Peskador, 1987) and ?Poems en Route? (UST Publishing House, 1998).

Kilates is also noted for his translations of Filipino poetry into English. His nine books of translation include works of major Filipino poets, such as National Artist Virgilio Almario, Rogelio Mangahas and Jesus Manuel Santiago. His latest book is a new English translation of Francisco Balagtas? ?Florante at Laura,? the UP Centennial Edition.

The late poet Alfrredo Navarro Salanga said Kilates? ?poems do not, as powerful poems do, hit you in the proverbial gut. His poems hit you in that region reserved for the mystic third eye, slightly above the bridge of one?s nose, set directly in front of one?s cerebrum.?