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Project Summary:

This project analyzes multiple cultures of the Americas through the 21st century art installation, electronic and video poem publications, and performance/spoken word poetry of the Hispanic diaspora in Canada. By examining these works, the project builds upon my working corpus, which I have compiled since 2014. The results of my prior analyses are available in my publications to date. Based on this groundwork on poets that I have already identified as working through poetry actions, the current list of contemporary poets includes: Sergio Faluótico, Melisa Machado, Rocío Cerón, Alberto Río, Miguel Avero, Orientación Poesía, Enrique Winter, Cecilia Vicuña, among other, from across the Americas.

The Summer 2020 portion of the project adds new voices to be studied, expanding the research to include Hispano/Latinx Canadian poets who are currently working in this field. The main questions guiding the inquiry include the following:

What have been the effects of this poetry art actions, performances and/or installations?

Why have these poets extended the reach of poetry beyond the traditional book format?

What is poetry for each author? What is its current role in society?
How do these definitions and spatial associations link with the hybrid and hyphenated concepts of identity that blur an easy connection to either place of belonging--to that of birth and/or of migration?

The data is collected in a variety of ways including observation, interviews and literature review. The project aims to understand the connections or un-relatedness between contemporary writers across the Americas creating poetry in Canada. In the 21st century this can include existing conditions about relationship, political dislocation, gender identity and agency. The project will examine the various approaches of Hispano Canadian poets that merge performance art, installation-making and digital media devices such the Internet and computer-generated hypertexts in their work, to ascertain why they chose certain sites for their works, and how they overcome challenges in the professional, personal and socio-political spheres.

My project proposes to compare and contrast the use of the arts—poetry-based, though not confined to the traditional book in print format—as vehicles for agency and reaffirming multicultural and transcultural actions in the world.

Prioritizing the focus on the effects of digital spaces of encounter in contrast with live performances bridges various aspects of the performative in relation to spoken word, visual and sound elements in relationship to subjectivity. Each work reveals the innovative and ever changing textures of these artistic creations into dialogue within larger national and global conversations.

Project Description:

This project studies e-poetic expressions of Hispanic Diaspora writers in Canada. The relation to space, identity and culture interweave with imagined and embodied awareness that is expressed creatively though web presence, word, sound and image. Themes of (im)migration, belonging, vernacular identity and (inner/outer) exiles are communicated in hyper-spaces of encounters. Situated in relation to new studies in Latin American cyber literature, the e-works in Spanish and English make available insights into the current innovations in e-poetry by the Hispanic-Canadian diaspora.

Project Type:
Funded

Project Role:
Principal Investigator

Country 1:
Canada

Country 2:

Country 3:

Country 4:

Funder:
Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, York University

Year Project Started:
2020

Collaborator:
Natasha Sarazin

Collaborator Institution:
York University

Collaborator Role:
Research Assistant