A01=Jose Felipe Alvergue
anti-racism poetry
antiracism
Author_Jose Felipe Alvergue
BIPOC
Category=DCC
Category=DCF
Category=DCRS
Category=DS
chicano
contemporary voice
ecopoetry
ekphrastic poetry
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_poetry
experimental poetry
family history
family poetry
forthcoming
Hispanic
identity
immigration
innovative poetry
Latinx
migration
multicultural poetry
philosophical poetry
photography
poethics
poetry as healing
postlyric
psychiatry in poetry
sonnet
surreal poetry
trauma
Xicano
Product details
- ISBN 9781632432124
- Weight: 172g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 05 Jun 2026
- Publisher: Omnidawn Publishing
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Poetry that considers migration and identity through formal experimentation with sonnets.
José Felipe Alvergue’s en el norte/soy del sur, which translates to “in the north I am of the south,” is an exploration into the limits of the American sonnet, one that seeks to establish a stable sense of place, while opening vistas at each turn. Stitching together multiple sonnets into what he calls “sonnet essays,” Alvergue rides their turns—or “voltas”—that are guided by memories and photographs of his family’s migratory history between El Salvador and the United States.
The resulting text is a story of human geography that considers the coordinates of a long, continuous thought about what it means to be “of a place” as a defining characteristic of identity, when one is also “in a place” that sets strict limits on the political and historical potential of im/migrants. A deeply human documentary work that delves into one family’s migration across the hemisphere, en el norte/soy del sur hopes to give shape to the collective and often amorphous history of migration in the face of narratives that peddle spectacularized distillation and essentialism.
José Felipe Alvergue’s en el norte/soy del sur, which translates to “in the north I am of the south,” is an exploration into the limits of the American sonnet, one that seeks to establish a stable sense of place, while opening vistas at each turn. Stitching together multiple sonnets into what he calls “sonnet essays,” Alvergue rides their turns—or “voltas”—that are guided by memories and photographs of his family’s migratory history between El Salvador and the United States.
The resulting text is a story of human geography that considers the coordinates of a long, continuous thought about what it means to be “of a place” as a defining characteristic of identity, when one is also “in a place” that sets strict limits on the political and historical potential of im/migrants. A deeply human documentary work that delves into one family’s migration across the hemisphere, en el norte/soy del sur hopes to give shape to the collective and often amorphous history of migration in the face of narratives that peddle spectacularized distillation and essentialism.
José Felipe Alvergue is the author of four books, including his work of autotheory purplish: poetry anger publics and the poetry collections scenery and precis, the latter of which was also published by Omnidawn.
