AGIMAT

<p><i> this charms the buried light of stars ¿<br>this deflects bullets ¿ this unblooms a war ¿</i><br><br>In some Filipino clans, parents pass down to each child an <i>agimat</i>, an amulet or charm, in the hope its magic will protect and empower them. In a world of daily pain and loss, Romalyn Ante¿s second collection asks how do we keep safe what we hold most dear? At the dawn of the pandemic, the poet ¿ a practising nurse in the NHS ¿ is thrown onto the frontlines of the war against COVID-19, and finds herself questioning what it means to fight, and what it takes to heal.<br><br>Past conflicts swim into the now: when the poet falls in love with a man of Japanese heritage, it forces a reckoning with her family¿s suffering under Japan¿s brutal wartime occupation of the Philippines. Elsewhere, we meet the irrepressible, many-breasted goddess Mebuyan, the poet¿s alter ego. In Philippine myth, Mebuyan nurses the spirits of departed children in the underworld, but here she watches over y