Karl “Kid” Orit, an alumnus of the Communication Arts program, Batch 2009, of Faculty of Arts and Letters, was named Makata ng Taon 2020 by the Komisyon ng Wikang Filipino for his poem entitled Moloch!, which bagged the highest recognition, in an announcement posted on KWF Facebook Page on May 11, 2020.
With allusion to Fritz Lang’s silent film entitled Metropolis and Allen Ginsberg’s monumental poem entitled Howl, Moloch was molded from Orit’s life as a working class trying to surpass Metro Manila’s daily predicament of commute just to go to work, along with other Filipinos.
“[Moloch in the film] ate the workers as a sacrifice for it to get keep working,” Orit said. “That scene had a big influence on how I would want to present our condition now. Allen Ginsberg also used the same image of Moloch.”
Orit’s collection of poems entitled Para kay P won first place in Maningning Miclat Poetry Competition in 2017. He also has a suite of poems in Tomás (Vol 3 Issue 1), the literary journal of UST Center for Creative Writing and Literary Studies.
Moreover, he was among the selected young writers in the 2018 UST National Writers Workshop organized by CCWLS.
The former Thomasian Writers Guild member is currently the president of Cavite Young Writers Association (CYWA) and the public relations officer (2019-2021) of Linangan as Imahen, Retorika, at Anyo (LIRA).
