Dominador “Dom” Ibarra Ilio was a poet and professor born in Malinao, Capiz. He is considered a pioneer of Philippine literature in English as a recognized poet and author both in the Philippines and in the United States. He was an engineer by profession.
According to Hector Santos, Ilio is a very important and pioneering Filipino poet. Along with Edith Tiempo and Ricaredo Demetillo, Ilio studied under Paul Engle in the famous Iowa writing workshop in the early 1950s. Their poems were included in a special issue of Poetry: A magazine of verse in 1952.
Works
Dominador Ilio's poems have been compiled in The Diplomat and Other Poems and Collected Poems of Dominador I. Ilio. Aside from verse, he wrote books of fiction and non-fiction, namely: Guerilla Memoirs, Madia-as, The Katipunan of Aklan, and Vagaries of a Wild River. He is also included in Gémino Abad's and Edna Manlapaz's Man of Earth and its sequel, A Native Clearing and in Nick Carbo's anthology Returning a Borrowed Tongue, a collection of Filipino poetry in English, published by Coffee House Press, 1995. While studying in the United States, Ilio attended Paul Engle's Poetry Workshop in Iowa and received citations. He would later win the honorable mention for his novel State of War at the UP Golden JubileeLiterary Contest. He also won in the Republic Anniversary Poetry Contest. His poems "The Diplomat" and "Icarus in Catechism Class" are often anthologized and included in textbooks of literature. List of Works
The Diplomat and other Poems. Quezon City, Diliman: The Guinhalinan Press, 1955.
Carbo, Nick. Returning a Borrowed Tongue: An Anthology of Filipino and Filipino American Poetry, Coffee House Press, 1995.
Legacy
Until his retirement in 1978, he was a professor of hydraulics at the University of the Philippines College of Engineering, where he also served as head of the Engineering Science Department; and College Secretary. Aside from this, he became the Secretary of the UP Alumni Engineers in 1954 and was selected as the Most Distinguished Engineering Alumnus in 1977. The Prof. Dominador I. Ilio Award is an award named in his honor in order to recognize the graduating student who showed excellence not only in academics, but also service, leadership, and extracurricular activities.
Dominador Ilio married Clotilde Yerro with whom he sired three sons: Dominador Jr., an activist during the time of Martial Law in the Philippines; Dennis, a computer engineer based in New York City; and Kenneth, a scientist turned photographer based in Chicago. In 1973, Prof. Dominador Ilio was arrested at his UP campus home because state agents could not find his son, Dominador, Jr. He was only released from Camp Crame a month later, once his son had been captured. Aside from teaching and writing, Dominador, Sr. was known among friends to be an expert bridge player. He died on February 7, 2006, at age 92.
