A Journey through the Poetry of Soledad Fariña: Volcar este paisaje. Antología personal (2023)

Abstract

The anthology Volcar este paisaje (2023) reveals the unity and coherence of Soledad Fariña's work from her earliest books to her most recent publication (Siempre volvemos a Comala, 2024), presenting the texts as a single unfolding, but at the same time establishing surprising associations that emerge from recent proximities. Eliana Ortega's excellent prologue highlights this surprising internal coherence and characterizes Fariña's work as a constant metapoetic questioning of the place of the subject in the landscape, writing, and the book, a question that shifts from the context of dictatorship in El primer libro (1985) to an exploration of language and the Andean American territory in En amarillo oscuro (1994). Her poetics establish a counterpoint that generates ambiguity, affiliating itself with avant-garde art and destabilizing the means of representation. Soledad Fariña employs strategies such as ekphrasis, intertextuality, and the appropriation of other voices, which places her in a critical movement toward the modern artistic subject and the notion of authorship. Based on the relationship between body, word, and silence, Fariña's poetry creates its own body and speech, which Pablo Oyarzún calls “somatopeya.” This text highlights her ability to (re)discover unknown or previously closed spaces and develop ways to address political trauma and memory, establishing itself as a crucial discourse for Latin American thought.