The Revolutionary Sixties: Poetry and Social Change

Abstract

The historian Eric Hobsbawm defined the sixties as a moment of collective intensity. In addition to the political changes, the decade created the material conditions for the emergence of a new kind of subjectivity, supported by shared cultural expectations. Poetry followed these subjective and social transformations through the expansions of literary forms and modes of exhibition. The objective of this article is then to examine how the poetic landscape of the sixties was shaped by this revolutionary energy. In order to do that, I am going to focus on three different locations: Northern Ireland (Belfast), Scotland (Glasgow), and Brazil (São Paulo).