Darío Jaramillo Agudelo was born in Santa Rosa de Osos in the province of Antioquia in northwest Colombia in 1947. He studied Law and Economics at the Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá. Dario Jaramillo Agudelo published his first book of poetry ‘Historias’ in 1974. Four years later his second book of verse ‘Tratado de retórica’ received the Premio Nacional de Poesía. His debut novel, 1983’s ‘La muerte de Alec’ – followed by several novels, including ‘Cartas cruzadas’ and most recently ‘La voz interior’ (2006) – proved him also to be a remarkable prose writer. In spite of this, as a writer, Darío Jaramillo Agudelo did not want to have to depend on royalties, scholarships and prize money, which is why, since 1985, he has earned his living as a cultural representative for the National Bank of Columbia. In 1995 Jaramillo Agudelo was made a corresponding member of the Colombian Academy of Languages. He lives in Bogotá. Darío Jaramillo Agudelo’s writing overcomes the gap which today separates poetry and prose; he lets the poetic stimulate his literature. In an interview with the Mexican newspaper ‘La Jornada’ he admitted, “I’m convinced that the only literary genre is that of poetry. A novel, an essay, a reportage is only valuable if it conveys poetic emotion”. However, his novels are not sentimental. They are dominated by topics having to do with the violent nature of everyday Columbian life, a subject that is also pursued by Columbia’s own literary movement, the ‘literatura de la violencia’. Dario Jaramillo Agudelo became popular above all through his series ‘Poemas de amor’. Together with Juan Gustavo Cobo Borda, Juan Manuel Roca, Giovanni Quessep, Henry Luque Muñoz, Raúl Henao, María Mercedes Carranza and Elkin Restrepo, Darío Jaramillo Agudelo belongs to the so-called ‘Generación sin Nombre’ (‘Generation without a Name’). He nonetheless does not see Latin and South American literature as experiencing a creative crisis. Instead, in Colombia’s very dynamic literature scene and publishing landscape a “wide array of possibilities” (Patricia Salazar) are unfolding.
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