José Garcia Villa

Jose Garcia Villa was born in Manila, Philippines, in 1908, and emigrated to the United States in 1929. He received a bachelor's degree from the University of New Mexico in 1932, then moved to New York for graduate study at Columbia University. Scribner's published a collection of stories called Footnote to Youth in 1933. In 1933, Villa dedicated himself exclusively to poetry and the experimental opportunities poetry promised. His first collection, Have Come, Am Here, was published in 1942 by Viking, and won the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award. His next book, Volume Two, was published in 1949 by New Directions, where he served as associate editor from 1949-1951. He went on to publish two more volumes of poetry in the United States — Selected Poems and New (1958: McDowell, Obolensky) and Appassionata (1979: King and Cowen) — and a number of books in the Philippines.

His awards and honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship (1942), Bollingen Foundation Fellowship (1951-52), Shelley Memorial Award (1958), Philippines Pro Patria Award (1961), Philippines Cultural Heritage Award (1962), and Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship (1963). He was appointed Presidential Adviser on Cultural Affairs by the Philippine government in 1968 and elected Philippines National Artist in 1973.

In the Philippines, Villa became the arbiter of literary taste in the growing body of English language work being produced. He taught poetry at City College and the New School, and held private poetry workshops in his Greenwich Village apartment. Villa died on February 7, 1997 in New York City.