Jeneen R.

Garcia
21st Century Literature from the
Philippines and the World

Submitted by:
Ryan Ivan C. Cruz
Grade 11 – Fortitude
June 22, 2016
 Jeneen R. Garcia was born in Manila on November 19, 1979, but grew up in

Davao City. She completed her degree in BS Environmental Science at the Ateneo de

Manila University, and currently works with an environmental NGO in Cebu City. At the

same time, she writes and photographs freelance for various publications.

Jeneen's poetry and essays have been published in Heights, Sun, Star Weekend

Cebu, Sunday Inquirer Magazine, Panorama, Philippines Free Press, and other

periodicals. Her work was also included in the Likhaan Anthology of English Poetry in

2000 and the Filipino-Singaporean anthology, Love Gathers All, in 2001. She was

awarded a Dean's Award for the Arts in Creative Writing when she graduated in 2000,

and won third place in the Homelife Poetry Contest in 2003. At present, Jeneen is the

Public Relations Officer of the Women in Literary Arts, Inc., the only organized literary

group of women in the country.

After writing poetry in English for almost nine years, and having attended all the

national and regional writers' workshops in the Philippines, she has very recently started

writing poetry in Cebuano.

She is also an Environmental evaluator with a track record in interdisciplinary

innovation steeped in complex systems thinking, dedicated to creating solutions and

opportunities for greater relevance, effectiveness and efficiency in evaluation design,

implementation and communication.

• In-depth experience in independent impact evaluation using both hypothesis-based

and exploratory qualitative and quantitative analytical methods

• Comprehensive field- and IT-based research experience on social-ecological systems,

employing environmental and socioeconomic data collection methods, and the analysis
and synthesis of secondary information sources

• Solid theoretical and applied training in environmental and biological sciences, and

ecosystem governance and management

• Extensive creative skills in written, visual and oral communication that integrates

scientific and artistic disciplines through different media.

After Eden
Poetry by Jeneen Garcia | February 10, 2008
They both bear the burden of the fruit.
Each day they toil in this marketplace
steaming in the morning heat, here
where there are too many ways to know
good and evil, life and death.

His strong back strains under the heavy basket,

her arms keep steady as she eases the weight.
It does not matter now whose wrong it was,
why each drop of sweetness comes from pain.
Grace still fills the smallest gestures of being.

At twilight, she boils the rice as carefully

as she draws her child close—tender, fierce—
the way her hands were shaped, the way
her breath warms his skin at night as she sleeps,
the only way her heart knows, has always known.