MANILA, Philippines ? ?This is the dilemma of the Filipino breadwinner. If he or she doesn?t leave, someone might die. More often now it?s the mother who must leave to work for slave wages and under slave conditions for foreign employers in a strange land (Hong Kong, Italy, Canada, wherever) or else the whole family will eat nothing in their dried up small plot of land?.?

So goes part of the introduction in the Philippine-based online magazine Poet?s Picturebook, created, edited and posted by the prizewinning poet Marne Kilates, to its April issue titled, ?Poems from and on the Diaspora, inside or half a world away.?

This 27th issue of Poet?s Picturebook features works of National Artist Virgilio Almario (using the pseudonym Rio Alma), Edgar Maranan, Frank Peñones Jr., Alfrredo Navarro Salanga, Jane Scott, Roland Tolentino, Ruel de Vera and Kilates himself.

?The poems came in without our prodding (which should be the case), others we dug out of our files and shelves, virtual and plywood? Kilates writes in the introduction.

?These poems of course will never claim to solve problems but they work well in recreating experience, especially by way of the contrasts, ironies, and other forms of magic in language ? e.g., the coldness of exile in Hong Kong?s ?Statue Square? and the diaphanous ?origami of I.M. Pei?; and, in ?Emily?s Letter,? the memory of gilling fish and the brewing evil of a deranged but sympathetic OFW mind (about to explode)?,? he adds.

To read the poems, log on to http://marnescriptsmain.blogspot.com/.