Jose Villa was a poet and writer. He was awarded the National Artist of the Philippines title for literature in 1973.

JOSE VILLA

In 1929, Villa published Man Songs, a series of erotic poems, for which he was fined by the Manila Courts for obscenity. However, in that same year, Villa won Best Story of the Year from Philippine Free Press magazine for Mir-I-Nisa and he used the prize money to emmigrate to the United States.

In 1933, Villa switched from writing prose to poetry, but published only a handful of works until 1942.

During the release of Have Come, Am Here in 1942, he introduced a new rhyming scheme called "reversed consonance" wherein, according to Villa: "The last sounded consonants of the last syllable, or the last principal consonant of a word, are reversed for the corresponding rhyme. Thus, a rhyme for near would be run; or rain, green, reign."

In 1949, Villa presented a poetic style he called "comma poems", where commas are placed after every word.

Villa worked as an associate editor for New Directions Publishing in New York City between 1949 to 1951, and then became director of poetry workshop at City College of New York from 1952 to 1960.

5 August 1908

to 7 February 1997