Chapter 11 - New Poetry, Fresh Approaches

Summary

This chapter explores transformations in the creation, transmission, and reception of Latin American poetries after 1980. One of these is ecopoetics, stimulated by shifting perspectives of both readers and writers living in a world in which we are increasingly aware of environmental change. Authors include Mexican Homero Arjidjis, Brazilian Astrid Cabral, Nicaraguan Esthela Calderón-Chevez, and Mapuche Elicure Chihauilaf. Other changes have to do with varying means of circulating poetry: through performance or electronic or multimedia presentations that expand what can be included in a poem, how it is constructed, and how it is received. We see this in Chilean Luis Díaz-Correa’s clickable poems, Argentine Belén Gache’s digital poems, and Uruguayans Juan Angel Italiano and Luis Bravo’s performative poetry. There are also contemporary approaches to reading Latin American poetries. Opening to transcontinental perspectives creates dialogues between North and South in Harris Feinsod’s and Charles Perrone’s approaches. Interdisciplinarity is a key feature of poetry considered in terms of health/illness, and looking at the work of Mexican Claudia Hernández del Valle Arizpe, Chilean Enrique Lihn, and Peruvian Victoria Guerrero Peirano demonstrates how lyric poetry is particularly suited to convey the body–mind collaboration or rebellion of serious illness.