Why Edith L. Tiempo is someone to look up to
They rose. They lifted others.
A National Artist who not only wrote beautifully, but also mentored generations of Filipino writers whose voices continue to shape Philippine literature.
She did not just leave books behind.
She left writers behind.
Edith L. Tiempo was one of the Philippines’ most distinguished literary figures - a poet, novelist, short-story writer, critic and teacher whose mastery of the written word earned her recognition as National Artist for Literature in 1999.
But perhaps an even greater measure of her life can be found in the hundreds of writers who came after her.
Born in Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya, in 1919, Tiempo devoted much of her life not only to writing literature, but to nurturing people who wanted to write.
In 1962, she and her husband, fellow writer and educator Edilberto K. Tiempo, established the writers’ workshop at Silliman University in Dumaguete.
What began there grew into the Silliman University National Writers Workshop - the country’s longest-running creative-writing workshop and one of the oldest of its kind in Asia.
Over the decades, more than 600 young writers received workshop fellowships. Many later became award-winning poets, fictionists, essayists, teachers and literary figures themselves.
Tiempo was not simply giving lectures.
She was helping form a generation.
Those who studied under her encountered a demanding teacher of craft - someone who expected writers to understand structure, language, discipline and close reading - but also a mentor who encouraged them to develop voices of their own.
And then there was the woman behind the National Artist.
At the workshop, generations of younger writers came to call her MOM EDITH.
On the first day, when others introduced themselves with titles and credentials, Edith Tiempo reportedly had a much simpler introduction:
“Call me Mom.”
There is a particularly touching recollection about a young writer who had become discouraged and was practically penniless. Tiempo quietly reached into her purse, handed him money and told him to go get some lunch.
Years later, what he remembered was not the money.
He remembered that, during a lonely period when he felt misunderstood, he had found someone who treated him like family.
Tiempo herself eventually described the writers who passed through the workshop as an extended family. She and her husband had studied creative writing intensively in the United States, and she came to believe that their preparation had given them an opportunity to help as many writers as they could.
That may be the most important part of her story.
She possessed knowledge - and passed it on.
She achieved distinction - and opened doors for others.
She developed her own voice - and then spent decades helping younger Filipinos discover theirs.
Edith Tiempo died in 2011 at the age of 92.
But the workshop she and her husband founded continues. The institution they created has helped turn Dumaguete into one of the important centers of Philippine literary life, and writers who themselves became mentors have carried forward what they learned there.
A great writer can leave behind great books.
A great teacher can leave behind people who continue the work.
Edith L. Tiempo left both.