Hi! Gretchen here.

I’m a poet and essayist based in the Philippines, where I embrace life while managing bipolar disorder and ADHD. My work focuses on unpacking the complexities of grief, healing, motherhood, love, and intersections. This is a space for poetry, prose, places, and people, and remembering the ephemeral and small infinities. Join me in inhabiting the human experience – one word at a time.

download my e-book: smol love

a mini=poetry collection

This 27-page chapbook contains 21 poems exploring love’s depths, including 17 previously published ones in local and international media. In these pages, you will find personal favorites such as How I love the world, which became a finalist in the 2023 Greg Grummer Poetry Contest.

Interspersed with photos I took across the years, smol love is a love letter to family, friendship, old bonds, the world, and everything that weaves our shared humanity together. It is a smol offering of connection from one spirit to another, made accessible to everyone – as poetry should be.

Interviews & features


The Hooghly Review

In Conversation with Gretchen Filart

The Isthmus

Interview: Gretchen Filart – On Art and Colonization, The Important of Mentoring and How Writing has the Potential to Make us Whole

The Bulb Collective

BBC Shines a Light On: Gretchen Filart (Upcoming May 2025)

Published poems

First assessment
First assessment

When the young doctor said, adjusting her thick glasses,  “You might have ADHD. I am referring you to a psychiatrist for a final…

Ghosting
Ghosting

Welcome to our cityof ghosts who steppedinto the ether, orbitingthe graves of our collectivephantom pain. Missingperson posters as keepsakes. Hypothermia…

Memento mori
Memento mori

Ghosts remain even when there is no unfinished business between the departed and the living. Everything—your favorites in a friend’s playlist, your Rumi…

PUBLISHED PROSE

Poisons
Poisons

We all desire something lethal to feel alive. In my recurring dreams, snakes entrancing my body. A Philippine Pit Viper…

latest

from my journal

To go forth and multiply

To go forth and multiply

Adjusting his eyeglasses, the priest read Genesis 1:28. “This is the most misunderstood verse in the bible.” I was covering…

Letter #27: Twelve

Letter #27: Twelve

Hello, Lia. You turned 12 today. I am walking in the arid, sticky April dusk, lightweight, thankful. For these lungs…

what people say

ABOUT MY WORK