Quote by Edith Tiempo: “The poem is always in search of its reader.”

Writing is not complete when the writer finishes it — it reaches its full meaning only when a reader encounters it and makes it their own. A poem travels through time looking for the person who needs it. The writer and reader are both necessary for the poem to truly exist.

Tiempo was writing and teaching during the height of the Marcos era's cultural politics, a period in which Philippine identity — including its literary traditions — was being shaped by both nationalist ideology and the continuing influence of American colonial education. Her work represented an independent literary voice.

Filipino poet and fiction writer, born in Bayombong in 1919, and one of the most significant voices in Philippine literature in English. She co-founded the Silliman National Writers Workshop with her husband Edilberto Tiempo, shaping generations of Filipino writers, and received the National Artist Award for Literature in 1999.