Visual and Plastic Poetics

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Characteristically a-syntactic and focusing on the word and poem as object, Brazilian concrete poetry (1950s onward) creatively and often playfully performs a critique of the ways in which we interact with language and literature. The concretist techniques move beyond the Brazilian borders to the Chilean neo-avant-garde of the 1970s and 1980s. Robinson for the first time demonstrates how three Chilean experimental poets, Cecilia Vicuna (1947-), Juan Luis Martinez (1942-1993) and Rodrigo Lira (1949-1981), develop and expand upon Brazilian concrete poetics. Furthermore, the Chilean recovery of the experimentations with concrete poetry transfers the critique of language from an international sphere to the severe political reality of Chilean politics, particularly during or in relation to the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

Rachel Robinson has published several articles on the works of Latin American experimental poets. She completed her DPhil at the University of Oxford in 2018 and a postdoctoral fellowship at the Instituto de Estudios Avanzados of the Universidad de Santiago de Chile in 2021. She will begin a Humboldt Foundation postdoctoral fellowship in Berlin this summer.