1. Philippine poetry (English) In the tradition of the great Romantic poets, Simeon Dumdum Jr.’s Aimless Walk, Faithful River is a delicious meandering through lush poetic landscapes in a relentless search for those wellsprings that make us fully human and fully alive. Blending his superb lyrical and narrative gifts with an effortless mastery of poetic forms, Dumdum meditates on the consolations of nature, the transience of beauty, the accidental pleasures of travel, love and loss, the wisdom of age, the unguarded tenderness of children, religion and politics. Walking through these pages, I wasn’t “just reading a book, [I] really was reading the world.”