A designer, an online gamer, and a poet.

The only thing missing is music and the kitchen sink.

ThePoet’s real name is Diwa Fernandez. Her mother (Nena Fernandez) is a writer and her father (Egai Fernandez) is a social realist painter. She studied at the University of the Philippine College of Fine Arts, majored in Visual Communication and got her hands dirty on websites around 1997.

ThePoet - is her alias over the internet for quite some time now. It used to be poetess but she corrected herself on using the name. There is no such thing as poetess (politically speaking), she said. Some people think that having the alias thePoet only refers to being a ‘poet’, one who writes poetry. She believes that it is not.

It is not just with words that one can create poetry but through codes and design.

- Diwa

That’s her motto even back then, she just couldn’t express it well enough since she just starte to be known back in 2001. So who is thepoet, really?

Born on November 29, 1979. Around 1999, her personal website was recognized by a small company and got hired immediately. It was a short career since she still had to finish her college degree. Late 2000, She finally got herself hired as a web designer in a corporate company. That was when she started focusing on flash and php programming. Mid year of 2001, she stumbled on a site, My Pet Skeleton, and from then she became bewitched by its style and design. That’s when she ended up joining a channel in irc as well as joining the Philweavers group.

Early 2002, she started making a name for herself by creating a full flash art magazine, fully optimized, integrated with php and xml on her own. Mid 2002, that website was featured on a local channel called “Ditigal Tour”. Some where around 2003, she became co-chairperson in Philweavers and the rest is history. Currently, she is a webdesigner in The Design People and is quite happy.

Are you still active within your group?

I am still a member of the Philweavers group but with little power. I decided to just lay low a few years back. heh, long story.