Organisation of Panel 'Poetry and Resistance in Contemporary Latin America', with Joanna Crow, at the annual conference of the Society for Latin American Studies Panel description: Throughout the late 20th century, poetry has emerged as a crucial form of resistance in Latin America: as a form of testimony, as prophecy, as a mode of survival, as an act of unifying public speech. In this panel we wish to explore lineages from these practices that lead into the 21st century. We invite papers on all aspects of the relationship between poetry and resistance; for example on specific poetic practices, on the relationship between poetry and social movements, and on the place of poetry in cultural politics. We are interested in contributions that investigate the place of poetry in public space; the relationship between poetry, resistance and the natural environment; and the role of poetry in the ALBA countries. 'Poetry' is here not equivalent with 'the poem' or with a discipline whose characteristics are defined by academics and critics: it is also an 'event' in the sense of Alain Badiou, and the use of poetic language is not exclusively present in poems. The public letters of the Zapatistas, for example, invite a discussion regarding the relationhip between 'poetry' as a genre and 'poetic language' as a way of breaking through the confines of a world that cannot imagine an alternative, and as building the linguistic foundations for the other world that is possible. 'Resistance' is taken to refer to the resistance to the global hegemony of neoliberal capitalism; thus, poetry that is contextualized within non-capitalist alternative political visions can also be considered within the scope of this panel.