Library of Rassegna iberistica

Archivo, documento y memoria: la poesía documental en el Perú del siglo XXI

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Abstract

American researchers Sarah Ehlers and Niki Herd affirm that the term ‘documentary poetics’ is used to describe a wide range of poetic projects that use historical materials or that narrate historical events (2022). Without a doubt, the relationship between historical material or documents has existed for a long time in universal literature. In the Peruvian case, a key moment in which poetry massively uses historical events or materials is the sixties and especially the seventies. Both generations, but especially the seventies, assume poetry as an extension of reality that is now the object of poetry and therefore poetized. His reflection on reality, from the so-called conversational poetry, also seeks to reflect on Peruvian history (Antonio Cisneros, Juan Ramírez Ruiz, Tulio Mora) and its relationship with the poetic self that inscribes it. In the 21st century, documentary poetry as a branch of Peruvian poetry has been little developed and less studied since the current line with the greatest hegemony is the so-called language poetry (Mario Montalbetti, Santiago Vera, etc.). In this article I will focus on three books of 21st century documentary poetics, Sisma. Poema Documental (2022) by Paul Guillén, Political Constitution of Peru (2021) by Santiago Vera, and finally Persona (2017) by José Carlos Agüero. Although the three books are quite close to the formal experimentalism of language poetry, we will see what characteristics bring them closer to the documentary poem and what their scope is in the face of the Peruvian reality in crisis of the second decade of the twenty-first century.


Open access | Peer reviewed

Submitted: Nov. 13, 2024 | Accepted: Jan. 9, 2025 | Published Aug. 1, 2025 | Language: es

Keywords ArchiveDocumentary poeticsDocumental poetryPeruConceptual poetry


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