Research groups

The POEPOLIT project aims to systematically study the political character of some contemporary poetical expressions of the West. Through the analysis not only of texts, but also of intermediatical phenomena, we will inquire on a series of relevant issues: we will try to understand, for example, if an aesthetically complex poem is less likely to exert political influence than a most popular poem; if poetry and poets should be more widely recognized as agents and potential conformers of a particular vision or epistemology; which is their influence on society and which, if any, the recognition of this influence by society; or which would be the implicit consequences or risks of a poem that is supposed to be apolitical or “separated” from society; how the current horizons of the “political” can be expanded through new poetical and analytic languages. The main theoretical objective will be to verify the effectiveness and applicability of the notion of politics in the analysis of current poetry starting from the set of contemporary theoretical proposals and perspectives that directly equate poetry with politics or approaching them more gradually, according to different perspectives and methodologies. Another theoretical objective will be to develop an argument capable of integrating the perspectives of contemporary non-lyric poetry with its relations with the public space and the socio-political context. In this sense, we will analyze contemporary poetical phenomena from multiple and diversified cultural backgrounds: mainly Hispanic, Lusophone and English-speaking, but also from the Spanish, Francophone, Galician, German and Basque languages. On the basis of methodologies derived from sociocritical theory, post-modernism, postcolonialism, etc., particular attention will be paid to the practices of poetic mediation and their political impact; to the verbal practices of political intervention, particularly in the protest repertoires of contemporary social movements; to the relationship between poetry and politics based on the notion and the figure of the author; to the relationship between poetry and politics in the neoliberal city. Besides the case studies undertaken by multidisciplinary and comparative perspectives – which include not only the production, but also the mediation or transfer and reception of poetical practices with a political dimension –, we will proceed to the registration and classification of current poetical practices and methodological and theoretical-critical studies in a virtual database that aims to become a reference point and a unique tool for the study and analysis of the relationship between contemporary poetry and politic in the western context.