Alejandro G. Abadilla (March 10, 1906 – August 26, 1969), widely known as AGA, was a Filipino poet, essayist and fiction writer.
He is sometimes referred to as the father of modern Philippine poetry for challenging established forms and literature’s “excessive romanticism and emphasis on rhyme and meter.”
His Ako ang Daigdig collection of poems is one of his better known works.
The term sanaysay — the Tagalog word for “essay” — was coined by Abadilla in 1938 to mean “pagsasanay” (exercise) or “pagsasalaysay ng isang sanay o nakasulat na karanasan ng isang sanay sa pagsasalaysay.”
