Contemporary Judeo-Spanish Poetry: Language in Search of a Modern Form

The article investigates the issue of the status of contemporary Judeo- Spanish literature, principally poetry, and advances the thesis of the postvernacular character of works written in Judeo-Spanish (Ladino). The backing for this conclusion is an analysis of dozens of volumes of poetry published during the arrebivimyento period, between 1975 and the 2020s. This study analyses several characteristic features of these book editions that give evidence of the postvernacular condition of the language and its culture, primarily the multilingualism of the book, the variety of the adopted alphabets and orthographic notation in the Latin alphabet, and the presence of many paratexts. These elements are understood as aimed at supporting the reception of a book written in Ladino by its potential readers—in a situation where the Ladino language itself, classified as endangered, is not “autonomous” enough. The article concludes by offering the metaphor of a nature monument of a tree, protected and upheld in its existence by various “props,” as a figure reflecting both the material and nonmaterial aspects of contemporary Judeo-Spanish literature and books.