Jorge Santiago Perednik

Jorge Santiago Perednik (1952-2011) was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. An influential poet and literary critic, he was also a publisher and a translator of English and American poetry. He founded several literary journals, two of the most influential being XUL and Deriva. The former was an important poetry journal that started publishing during Argentina’s last military dictatorship in 1980; it continued until 1997 with the printing of its 12th issue. As a journal, XUL provided regular compilations of some the most innovative poetry of its time. The journal was also one of Argentina’s best sources of new critical writing.  It was dedicated to publishing the most diverse poetics within the experimental tradition. Perednik's work as a poet and editor reflected his interest in many of the poetics included in the journal: visual poetry; John Cage’s mesostics; sound and performative texts--along with the most serious experimental works in Spanish American poetry. Perednik’s writing was primarily associated with his always expanding interest in exploring language and its relation to poetry rather than with any particular literary school.

Jorge Santiago Perednik, who was born in Buenos Aires in 1952, was the author of poetry, essays, and translations. He died this morning in Buenos Aires.

Perednik was  a poet of transformations and intimacies, gestures and jests, epochal lyrics and lyric epics, lurid lines and luring stanzas. The sheer intelligence of his social critique brushes constantly against the shine of his poems' sounds and cuts.

His poetry collections include El Shock de los Lender (1986), El fin del no (1991), and El Gran Derrapador (2002), among others. His poems have appeared in English in The XUL Reader (1992) The Oxford Book of Latin American Poetry (2009); and The Shock of the Lenders and Other Poems is forthcoming from Action Books. He has translated poets including Charles Olson and Jerome Rothenberg into Spanish. Perednik is Director of the Program of Advanced Studies in Poetry at the University of Buenos Aires. He founded XUL Magazine in 1980.

XUL  and the The XUL Reader are on line here.

A one hour interview and reading, produced by Ernesto Livon-Grosman, is available here at PennSound.