By Shayla Elizabeth
Chris Macalino is a Filipino-Canadian poet/writer, and visual artist, born in Mexico, Pampanya. With his parents, through the Canadian WE program, at age eight, he immigrated. “The first time I saw a library—in school.”
At St. John’s high school, he met “really cool” adults—Art, English–leading to submitting an art portfolio to the University of Manitoba’s School of Fine Art.
Again, he had great professors, like author Dennis Cooley, where a creative writing portfolio was also submitted. Dennis taught the tools a writer needs. Chris also went to poetry readings, spending time writing with poets like Kristian Enright, Paul Friesen, Jesse Dawson Harms, and still friends with. He has been going to Speaking Crow, a poetry open mic, since 1999.
He has self-published All Psyched Up (2017), poetry paperback, with McNally-Robinson self-publishing program—a #1 Best-seller, which led to a book signing with Strong Badger CoffeeHouse.
In collaboration with M. C. Joudrey, of At Bay Press, who asked Chris what he really wanted to do, Chris said, “…make art.”, Winnipeg Graffiti (2019) was published, a poem in seven parts, Japanese paper, blue/violet ink, foam core, on stained glass.
Chris was an editor on the comic strip Bodjie, created by his cartoonist friend Gilbert Trillana, who is also Filipino-Canadian. The comic strip included characters speaking Tagalog, with English translation at frame-bottom.
He released a chapbook, Motel Misc, a new style of extended poetry, a foray into ghost stories and Prairie surrealism.
His most recent, Chilled to the Bone, was in the Manitoban Hallowe’en issue, a 1-page broadsheet with a 100 line poem: all about archaeology on shared history, Robert Kroetsch, Carmelo Militano, and Dennis Cooley.
“I am thankful to be celebrating Asian Heritage Month with the MWG, I am reminded of going to ESL (English as a Second Language)–what it has taken so far to get here—Prairie writers, I LOVE Canada!”