Oceania | Celebrating the Cultural Diversity

Frederick Alexander III Kesner
Born to Ermelina Palanca Neri and Frederick Rosauro Kesner II in 1967 at the University of Santo Tomas Hospital in España, Manila. Frederick is the eldest of five children. He spent his childhood between San Juan del Monte and Coron, Palawan, attending Aquinas School [San Juan] and later the University of Santo Tomas [Manila]. After a brief career in island missions he taught kindergarten and highschool English. As part of the language faculty at St. Augustine Academy [Coron], he published with his senior English class Into Janus, a collection of selected creative writing exercises throughout that schoolyear, 1991-92.

In 1998 he received a degree in theology at the Asian Seminary of Christian Ministries [ASCM, Makati City]. In the same year he married Jacqueline Maryorick Diaz-Gandolfo in Brisbane, Australia. The couple returned to the seminary to pursue and complete their masters of arts degrees at the Makati City campus of ASCM. From 2000-2005 they worked in youth ministry in the Macarthur region of south-Sydney. They have now returned home to Ipswich [west Brisbane] and are proud parents to their firstborn child, Kayla Jaclyn Kesner.

Frederick Kesner's collected earlier poems are found in two volumes, Waking Up to Self and Eye Soar. He also authored a selection of short poetry and haiku in Tagalog, Sa Pag-Angil ng Uwak. Mr. Kesner has also authored several works of short fiction, unpublished essays, and novels. Several of Frederick's poems have been featured in the Australian literary journal The Curious Record and the Stylus Poetry Journal.

'For All People'

Be kind to the unkind
the sun shines on us all
seek my face upon yours
from this morning onward

Sing the tune of the heart
both eyes and ears a pair
let hearts and minds compare
you then will understand

We all suffer and howl
walking with colours shed
crying in varied keys
so long for coming peace

We push and shove against
hurling stones onto bones
tired of having to grow
through mistakes of knowing

Causes are blinding all
be you there to despair
each night returns in sleep
each day for all to keep

'Your Holy Book or Mine?'

So what if I've gone to Scripture
maybe just to have a look?
So what if it spoke to me so loud
with brilliant flashes of cutting blades?
So what if all my thoughts are laid bare
stripped of any guile or disguise?

We all are pilgrims in this journey,
We all seek for what we know
We do not have yet could not name;
We all of us are on a quest toward
What we know eternity must hold....

So what if in my searching I find
whims and wandering thoughts reigned
within the cosmic finiteness of this mind?
Then there must have been some use
undusting and poring through that Tome.

'From Swords to Plowshares'

A field of crop
once was a battlefield [red]
now feeds a remnant -

They that survived
the young that gave up their lives
so that this plot of land

Might remain in this nation
to fly its flag
and export its blood-bought grain.