JosAnton Artze Harzabal: the environment and poetry (1969-1979)

Abstract

• When JosAnton Artze adopted the pseudonym of Harzabal he was living in a
  very special historical moment. Socio-economic and political changes were ta-
  king place worlwide in the 60s. The Basque Country was under the repressive
  Franco´s regime and after the first years of repression, the Basque culture star-
  ted to sow the seeds of the countrys renewal; the poet contributed to this task
  with the music of the group Ez Dok Amairu (1965-1972). On the other hand,
  experimentation has been a fundamental feature of Artze, since his beginning he
  had looked for another way to make poetry, putting everything in doubt, from
  the writing support of the poem to the form it can acquire or its sonority
  (working on visual or phonetic poetry). Regarding the experimental trend, to-
  gether with his brother Jesus Mari, he recovered the txalaparta from oblivion
  and bring it to fame by modernizing it. This being so, I will first describe the
  poet´s closest environment at the time that the pseudonym of Harzabal was
  adopted, and then I will present the poetry books he published then and his
  shows.