The punk poetry of Giovanni Oquendo. Dialectic of the intimate and the public against exoticism and the simplification of violence

Abstract

This article analyzes key elements in the work of the punk poet Giovanni Oquendo (Medellin, 1969). Virtually unknown in the literary field, this writer’s work moves between the intimate and the political, between the symbolic and the pamphleteering, to propose a hybrid poetics that manages to question the commonplaces through which Colombian identity has been understood and narrated in cultural products. Influenced by Anglo-Saxon punk and symbolist poetry, Oquendo’s work deals with urban violence, punk, and marginality from a complex and dynamic perspective positioned against the exoticism, tropicalization and miserabilism that have historically prevailed in Colombian cultural production.