CURE out and about with Diana Rodríguez Vértiz
WHEN
WHERE
University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and the Centre Expert du Psychotraumatisme Pediatrique, CHU Lenval
Hôpitaux Pediatriatriques de Nice, France
LANGUAGE
ENGLISH | FRENCH
PROGRAM
The “Beyond Trauma” conference (June 9, 10, & 11, 2025; Nice, France) aims to gather an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars to share their research (ethnographies, theories, and clinical practice) on post-traumatic states from resistance and resilience to retribution and growth.
Diana Rodríguez Vértiz: Luis Hernández Camarero Poetry Notebooks as a Cultural Practice in the Search for Healing
At the beginning of the 1970s, the Peruvian poet and doctor Luis Hernández Camarero started writing his famous Poetry Notebooks and giving them to the people on the streets of Lima. Gifting these artist books was an exercise that Hernández Camarero considered part of his medical labor, which was focused on avoiding and healing pain.
How could this poetic material work as a medium that offered healing or relief? For Hernández, the aim of sharing poetry was “to make people suffer less”, as he stated in one of the few interviews he gave (Zisman, “Luis Hernández: el arte de la poesía” Correo, Lima, 1975). To do that, the Peruvian created a poetics based on collage that mixed his verses with quotes from other artists, drawings, musical staffs, magazine clips, lyrics, maps, and other pieces the author enjoyed. The Poetry Notebooks also contained prose and verses related to the violence experienced in clinics, in the police station, and on the streets (he started his project two years after the coup d’etat led by general Juan Velasco Alvarado, that consolidated a military government in Peru).
Luis Hernández’s Poetry Notebooks offered both a testimony of a shared experience of daily violence, and a balm for the pain that was a product of physical, institutional, or quotidian maltreatment. In this presentation, Diana Rodríguez Vértiz explores Hernández’ project as a cultural practice in the search for healing. To do that, she will focus on the reparative outcomes of sharing traumatic experiences, and on the artistic and creative ways we can respond to those traumatic events.