Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at the poetic practice and activist politics of Piedad Morales in the context of the women’s social movements and peace campaigns in Colombia.

Paper long abstract:

Since the early 1990s, poetry in Colombia has been promoted as a transformative practice, having a role in instilling peace and social justice in a nation saturated by conflict. In particular, this has been concentrated around the Festival Internacional de Poesía de Medellín, winner of the Alternative Nobel Prize, which claims a role in the transformation of Medellín from murder capital to 'capital mundial para la poesía'. This understanding of poetry draws not only upon the idea of poetry as having a spiritual or 'civilising' function but the etymological roots of poiesis, the notion of making, transformation or 'bringing-forth'.

Over the same period a number of women's social movements have emerged in Colombia, linking feminist, pacifist and anti-militarist discourses in campaigning for a negotiated solution to the conflict. These movements have been linked to both an understanding of poetry in its literary sense and the role of the poetic as transformative.

One of the central figures in these movements was the poet and activist Piedad Morales (1956-2012). Active in the alternative cultural scene in Medellín, she was a published poet and founding member of the Ruta Pacífica de las Mujeres por la Solución Negociada del conflicto armado, Carnavalenguas and Mujeres de Negro. This paper will analyse her poetic practice, as it appears in her poems and her activist politics. Using María Zambrano's theory of razón poética, it will look at the use of poetry in the creation of alternative discourses or an alternative cultural politics to the armed conflict in Colombia.