Ernesto de Melo e Castro, Pêndulo, LLEOM, 1961
© Ernesto de Melo e Castro

This research project aims to analyze the experimental work of poets in Spain between the 1960s and the 1980s under conditions of censorship and repression during and shortly after the Franco regime, and their transatlantic connections with South American poets. The sociopolitical situation in Spain generated a poetic practice different from experimental positions in non-dictatorship countries. The post-dictatorship period is included in the project because aesthetically, the transition to democracy still bore the stamp of the dictatorship. Through mail art, Spanish poets entertained a transatlantic experimental poetry network with poets from Latin American dictatorships. It explores the connection between Spanish experimental poets and their Latin American counterparts, considering the transatlantic circulation of experimental poetic material as a way to bypass national censorship. This project examines the transformative and subversive potential of the Spanish poets’ experimental practices, and the role of transatlantic aesthetic communication in creating new spaces of expression.