Virginia R. Moreno (born 1925) is a Filipino writer.
She was born in the Tondo neighborhood of Manila and studied at the University of the Philippines, where she was editor of the campus newspaper, and at the Kansas Institute of International Education.
Virginia Moreno is a feminist. She is recognized not only as a poet but as a Philippine woman artist whose vision of art includes both aesthetics and politics. She is a poet whose works are deeply imbricated in her country’s socio-political and cultural milieu. Moreno has, however, managed to marry form, content and create texts whose polyvalence of idioms allow readers to contend with their very own historicity. She is a poet who has an interest in French Impressionism and Symbolist poetry while the rest of her generation, having been immersed in English and American Literature.
Tough and tender poets have installed Virginia R. Moreno as Philippine poetry's high priestess. Batik Maker and Other Poems is her sole and much-coveted book of poems. Of the 13 handcrafted copies made for its 1975 CCP-launching, 5 vanished altogether, spirited away by those possessed by its lush dream work and haunting strains. Moreno herself chose the batik-cloth cover, in the famous broken-sword motif of Javanese royalty, and flew it in from Jakarta. Her brother, Jose Moreno, supplied the Kyoto rice paper for its pages, bought from one of his Osaka sojourns.
In 2004, Virginia Moreno allowed the Ateneo library to craft the copy on display, a meticulous reproduction of the original-on the occasion of ALIWW's anniversary tribute for Moreno's lifetime work in poetry, theater, and the art of cinema.
