Elijah Jose Barrios and the Language of Home

By Noel Galon de Leon

Elijah Jose Barrios is a seafarer and writer from Santa Barbara, Iloilo. He writes in Filipino, English, Kinaray-a, and Hiligaynon. In 2023, he released his first book, Resurgence: Poems and Essays about Depression and Healing. Since then, his works have been included in anthologies such as Vulnerable and 17 Halin sa Ilaya. In just a few years, he has earned recognition from prestigious competitions, winning awards at Bantugan sa Panulatan Kinaray-a (2023 and 2024), Padya Dungug Kinaray-a (2024), the Leoncio Deriada Prize (2024), and the Gawad Bienvenido Lumbera (2025). He also became part of the LIRA Writing Workshop in 2024 and is now a full member of Linangan sa Imahen, Retorika, at Anyo (LIRA). As a ship crewman, Barrios has docked in more than forty countries, yet no matter how far he sails, the currents of his poetry always bring him back home, to the river of Iloilo, the lakes of Santa Barbara, and the springs of Barangay Talanghauan.

In a country where literary greatness is too often measured by proximity to Manila or mastery of English, Barrios chooses defiance. For him, writing is not merely an art form but a form of resistance, a declaration that Hiligaynon and Kinaray-a are not mere “dialects” but full languages of power, beauty, and truth. His journey into literature was far from polished or privileged. Instead, it was messy, fragmented, and born not of grand libraries but of student magazines scavenged and read with devotion. It did not begin with a sudden epiphany, but with a slow burn, fueled by heartbreak, disappointments, and the stubborn will to make words matter. His writing emerges from a life of struggle and memory, and today it stands as a voice for the Ilonggo and Kinaray-a, carving a space in a national literary landscape.

Elijah was not supposed to be a writer. Growing up in Santa Barbara, Iloilo, he was groomed as a performing artist under the Special Program in the Arts curriculum. Writing, back then, was an afterthought, a skill he used only for school publications and interschool competitions. Broadcasting was his assigned field, and though he excelled, he did not imagine himself as a literary figure.

His family background hinted otherwise. His father, a visual artist who mastered charcoal and oil pastel, and his mother, a Filipino teacher and writer, had quietly planted the seed of creativity in him. But the soil in which that seed fell was rough and unyielding. He had no access to vast libraries or the kind of book collections that many young writers take for granted. What he had instead were university magazines where he consumed editorials and feature articles written by campus journalists from different schools.

Still, when he entered maritime university, his hope dimmed. He failed the screening for the school’s student publication. For five years, he abandoned writing altogether.

But then came heartbreak. And with it, words.

In 2016, Elijah published his first article in a national newspaper, not because he wanted recognition, but because he needed release. He was not crying on paper; he was bleeding. He was not writing for applause; he was writing to survive. That single act of writing became the beginning of something larger than he could have imagined.

For years, Barrios clung to English, the “safe” language of legitimacy in Philippine literature. Like many provincial writers, he believed regional languages were too niche, too difficult, too heavy for someone like him to carry. Writing in Hiligaynon or Kinaray-a was, in his mind, the work of classically trained giants.

That changed in 2023.

He discovered the Bantugan sa Panulatan Kinaray-a and was struck with a vision: seafarers, his people, his community told not in English but in the rhythm and soul of their mother tongue. Region VI is one of the country’s largest suppliers of seafarers. What better way to honor them than by immortalizing their lives in Kinaray-a?

The first collection he read was by John Iremil Teodoro. Soon, he was devouring the works of Leoncio Deriada, Peter Solis Nery, and Genevieve Asenjo. From them, he learned wit, restraint, humor, and the delicate force of regional speech. Slowly, he built his own voice, not as an imitator, but as someone carrying the cadence of the Visayas into a new age of literature.

Perhaps the most powerful image of Barrios’ practice is him, alone, aboard a cargo vessel, writing Kinaray-a poems while the ocean roars around him. He says that every word in his language brings him home. Writing is not just composition, it is memory, scent, voice, and prayer.

He remembers curse words spoken in his grandmother’s voice. He remembers asking his parents for translations of forgotten words, only to be flooded with memories of childhood. His poetry is not just language, it is time travel, collapsing distance, and resurrecting voices of the dead.

For Barrios, the act of writing in Hiligaynon or Kinaray-a is deeply spiritual. It is not a performance for the literary elite, but a return to self, to roots, to the sacredness of belonging.

Despite his spiritual reverence for language, Barrios approaches contests like a craftsman. Preparation, for him, is discipline. He walks long distances to shape ideas. He reads voraciously, believing that consumption fuels creation. He curates’ playlists to enter specific mental landscapes, in the case of his winning entry at the Gawad Bienvenido Lumbera 2025, Catholic hymns and chants transported him into processions and Calvary roads.

Drafts are not left untouched. He sends them to mentors, friends, and even his brother for critique. Revision is grueling, but necessary. He does all this accompanied by his signature writing companion, an iced americano, no sugar.

When the results of Gawad Bienvenido Lumbera 2025 were delayed, Barrios braced for disappointment. By August, he had already convinced himself he had lost. So, when the announcement finally came, naming him the sole winner for Tula in Hiligaynon, he shouted and jumped, only the third time in his life that joy made him leap.

This was his third attempt at the award. Each time, he had poured more care, more effort, and more heart. The victory was not just recognition; it was validation. It was proof that his language, his voice, his people belonged in the nation’s literary landscape.

What made this collection different was its subject matter. It was not born of his personal heartbreaks or private pains. It was born of the nation’s wounds: the farmers massacred in Negros Occidental, the victims of extrajudicial killings, the mothers whose children were silenced by bullets.

The research was heavy, the stories unbearable. But Barrios pressed on. He knew poetry could not resurrect the dead, but it could remember them. It could honor them. It could carry their pain into language and ensure it would not be forgotten.

This, perhaps, is what makes his work radical. By writing in Hiligaynon, he turns private grief into public witness. He transforms the silenced into the sung. He insists that the stories of the forgotten can be told in the language of home.

Elijah Jose Barrios is not just a seafarer turned poet. He is not just a son of Santa Barbara who stumbled into literature. He is part of a larger struggle, the battle to prove that regional literature is not secondary, not provincial, not lesser.

His work forces us to confront uncomfortable questions: Why do we continue to measure literary greatness by proximity to English or Manila? Why do we call Hiligaynon and Kinaray-a dialects instead of what they are—languages with histories, poetics, and futures?

Barrios’ journey is far from over. He has already won multiple awards, published books, and joined communities. Yet he remains, at heart, the boy who had no books but still believed in words. The sailor who wrote poems at sea. And in doing so, he is not just writing poetry. He is rewriting the map of Philippine literature.

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Noel Galon de Leon is a writer and educator at University of the Philippines Visayas, where he teaches in both the Division of Professional Education and U.P. High School in Iloilo. He serves as an Executive Council Member of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts-National Committee on Literary Arts.