en el norte / soy del sur

By jose felipe alvergue

Poetry that considers migration and identity through formal experimentation with sonnets.

Jos 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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1632432129
• ISBN13: 9781632432124
• Release Date: April 2026
• Publisher: Omnidawn
• Length: 110 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 6.0" x 9.0"