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Hi! My name is Michael Balili, a writer from Manila. This is my website. Welcome. How are you today? [[I'm feeling okay.]] [[I feel bad about the world.]]

I am a writer, translator, teacher, & literary worker from Manila, the Philippines. I currently teach creative writing & literature at UP Diliman. Together with Paolo Manalo, we run <a href="https://gachapress.com" target="_blank">Gacha Press.</a>. Here is what I look like on a normal day: <img src="https://panitikanph.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Balili_Michael-Michael-Balili-e1776417014534.jpg"> [[(Here's what I look like as an Eric Wurm One Minute Sculpture).->Orange]] [[Here are some of my works online.->Works]] [[Here are my books.->Books]] [[What Am I Up To These Days->News]] [[My pillow page.->Hobbies]] <a href="https://panitikanph.com/panitikan-authors/michael-balili/"> Here is my PanitikanPH profile.</a > Send me an email at mtbalili@up.alum.edu.ph or find me in Instagram as @littlenoun.

Look at this cat. <img src="https://media0.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExYXBjc2Y5Z2wxYXIyd21yaDIwcXo1dzV0b3gxc2hwcWp6MnlwaWRwbyZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/lehsxJpCEmZlrqtwUj/giphy.gif"> Feeling better now? [[Yes->Hello]] [[No->I still feel bad.]]

Look at another cat. <img src="https://media2.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExZHBqN3hicXU3Y2F0eHNrajZjcW10ZTI0dWZidDkxMGY0MXM2c2UydyZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/8vQSQ3cNXuDGo/giphy.gif"> [[Yes->Hello]] [[No->It's not working!]]

Another one? <img src="https://media3.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExeTUzeXZua290emsydXEyYjl1ZHFlNDkyaTFyazE4d3E3cWlpbW8zdSZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/GRk3GLfzduq1NtfGt5/giphy.gif"> [[I can't help you.->Hello]] <a href="https://pointerpointer.com">Bye, Vangie!</a>

[[My first chapbook is //Velocirupture.//->Velocirupture]] [[My first full collection is //Kaiju.//->Kaiju]] I have a forthcoming second collection from UP Press titled The Brute Choir. It's about the drug war & our lives after it. Coming out this year. I have a forthcoming translation of <a href="https://carlospiocos.carrd.co" <a> Carlos Piocos III's (my boyfriend!)</a> poems into English. Coming soon from Gacha Press with a generous grant from the National Book Development Board. [[Go back to me.->I'm feeling okay.]]

Here are some of my works online. <a href="https://archium.ateneo.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2238&context=kk" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> Kritika Kultura 48 </a> <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1i3o_Qcry5eel7JXP95cnuzRVvPsgDBtv/view" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> Likhaan Journal 19 </a> <a href="https://decembermag.org/current-issue-36-1/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> "Ark" & "Kaingin" (December Mag) </a> <a href="https://singaporeunbound.org/suspect-journal/2025/1/10/overnight?rq=michael%20balili" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> "Overnight" a story (Singapore Unbound) </a> <a href="http://www.capecodpoetryreview.com/buy.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> "Fallen Dictators Fleeing in their Akhal-Teke" & "The Brute Choir"(Cape Cod Poetry #10) </a> <a href="https://www.rogueagentjournal.com/mbalili" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> "Limerence of Mother-of-Pearls in Peace Time" (Rogue Agent) </a> <a href="https://papertrailprojects.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> "Trumpeter" from Brave New Words Vol. 1 </a> <a href="http://www.jubilat.org/jubilat/archive/issue39/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> "Open World" (jubilat) </a> <a href="https://magmapoetry.com/archive/magma-80-avatars/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> "Glass" from (Magma Poetry 80: Avatars) </a> <a href="https://www.gachapress.com/dl" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> Come Armageddon, a poetry sampler from Gacha Press </a> <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vLdp00EC8mShyeNMoOKH2f9lTDTW7MsA/view target="_blank"UP Vargas Museum Ekphrastic Module featuring 2 of my poems </a> --- [[Go back to me.->I'm feeling okay.]]

<img src="https://i.imgur.com/W5PsAkU.png"> [[Go back to me.->I'm feeling okay.]]

Kaiju is my first collection. It means a lot to me because I wrote it in a span of 10 years. This book won a grant from the National Book Development Board. <img src="https://i.imgur.com/2l9RZH7.jpeg"> Here are some blurbs from my friends & teachers: What would it mean to live, “without barbaric / notions of nation or territory”? To reorient oneself to land, to other people, as well as to oneself? A dead whale, Chekhov, social media, temples, the “most toilet seats broken // by one’s head in one minute,” Goethe, the game of Jenga, a heart that can bungee jump: these are just a few of the presences that animate Michael Balili’s restlessly roaming collection. Kaiju is an ambitiously strange, musically dexterous, and always surprising collection. Here are poems that open and open, refusing any conclusion that is a definition. -Chen Chen Author of When I Grow Up I Want To Be a List of Possibilities --- “In Michael Balili’s poetry, the kaiju is none other than the self itself, an enormous strangeness that fractures and fragments into a stutter the more ardent and daring the poet’s pursuit of its form and meaning.” -Isabela Banzon --- Through Kaiju , Michael Balili has turned into a gypsy by way of his current itinerary – tuktok, shinkansen, whirlwind, a converse of light – And has become a magus as well via his wordsmithy; of which this following fragment ("Velocirupture") I can vividly redeem: <blockquote> “First, the thing must be earth. It must be rooted in the visible, provinces of the sensual, conceived and Aristotelian…. The thing must also decompose, meaning the thing must learn, Or the thing must teach. Gleeful animism. Water, loam, forest. Put spirit here. Put idea. Everything in existence is worth being destroyed. Cackles Goethe. Destroy.”</blockquote> (which brings us back at once to Henri Bergson’s elan vital: steady rotting away of the hard shell of the oak’s seed inevitably gives way to the tender seedling to seep dawnlight, dew, loam, lichen.) - Arnold Molina Azurin, Author of verses Leis of Isles --- After experiencing Balili’s mesmerizing poetics in Velocirupture in 2019, we surface from the strictures of the pandemic of our times with our reader’s sense of the uncanny keener to appreciate the astonishing con/défigurations in Kaiju in 2023, its anamorphosis dancing the language of images on the slippery floor of our restive fictions and afflictions. Balili’s wide-angle poetic lenses show us in poem after poem in all three sections of the collection, ever-widening spaces of possibilities when our habits of language are unshackled by a bard’s dexterity, his allusions transporting us across an erudite mindscape conversant with the languages of myth, game design, computing, the visual arts, and literature. In “Open World (Patch Notes)” at the beginning of the book, the ultimate blue of Giotto bleeds across the pages into the blues of cornstarch, periwinkle, and cerulean of “Cross Stitch,” the penultimate poem. Balili’s voice in “Come Armageddon,” sings his seer’s vision in painterly language juxtaposed with the motile images in Juan Luna’s painting, articulating both an invitation into spaces of shifting subject-positions and disruptions, and an urgent augury of endings, our ultimate kaiju: no there is no time. —Marjorie Evasco --- Kaiju was also nominated for the Gintong Aklat for Best Poetry in English & won a Special Award for Book Design. <img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1726388545407XBS-137.jpg"> Image from ABS-CBN News <a href="https://shopee.ph/Kaiju-Poems-by-Michael-Balili-i.75162109.23749246609">Buy Kaiju from Shopee</a> <a href="https://www.lazada.com.ph/products/pdp-i4327013408-s24300655848.html?c=&channelLpJumpArgs=&clickTrackInfo=query%253Akaiju%252Bmichael%252Bbalili%253Bnid%253A4327013408%253Bsrc%253ALazadaMainSrp%253Brn%253A37acd9dca79fc2e315ed1a4ae4fc7109%253Bregion%253Aph%253Bsku%253A4327013408_PH%253Bprice%253A260%253Bclient%253Adesktop%253Bsupplier_id%253A500190429406%253Bsession_id%253A%253Bbiz_source%253Ah5_internal%253Bslot%253A0%253Butlog_bucket_id%253A470687%253Basc_category_id%253A9000%253Bitem_id%253A4327013408%253Bsku_id%253A24300655848%253Bshop_id%253A2954393%253BtemplateInfo%253A107881_E%2523-1_A3_C%2523&freeshipping=1&fs_ab=2&fuse_fs=&lang=en&location=Metro%20Manila~Pasig&price=2.6E%202&priceCompare=skuId%3A24300655848%3Bsource%3Alazada-search-voucher%3Bsn%3A37acd9dca79fc2e315ed1a4ae4fc7109%3BoriginPrice%3A26000%3BdisplayPrice%3A26000%3BsinglePromotionId%3A-1%3BsingleToolCode%3A-1%3BvoucherPricePlugin%3A0%3Btimestamp%3A1779695639178&ratingscore=5.0&request_id=37acd9dca79fc2e315ed1a4ae4fc7109&review=1&sale=1&search=1&source=search&spm=a2o4l.searchlist.list.0&stock=1">Buy Kaiju from Lazada></a> [[Go back to my books.->Books]]

I am very happy with this one. <img src="https://i.imgur.com/olJQnXs.png"> Carolyn Hau says: Velocirupture’s startling juxtapositions and figurations of free-range absurdity and tenderness mark Michael Balili as a troubadour of our troubled times. You can't find this anymore but most of the poems here are also included in [[Kaiju]] so please consider getting that one. [[Go back to me.->Books]]

News & Annoucements 25 May 2026  We got a new dog, a black dachshund named Samanco. Our cat, Villanelle, scratched her left eye last weekend, so we’ve been giving her eye drops and taking care of her since then. --- I will fill this up with news about me if there are any!!

Things I love: I like secondhand bookstores & ukay-ukays. The Legend of Zelda & Doctor Who Final Fantasy XIV Online Korean & Vietnamese food Gardening Watching clouds all day One Piece punk rock Splatoon Things I hate: Liars mushy rice people who are always late small talk fascists antivaxxers People who say "git gud" --- I will update this list soon.