Princeton University Library is pleased to announce that the papers of Yolanda Pantin, one of the most distinguished living poets of Venezuela and Latin America, are now available for research in Firestone Library’s Special Collections.
Born in Caracas in 1954, Pantin studied literature at the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello. During that period, she joined the Calicanto literary workshop led by Antonia Palacios, a key formative space for many of the most influential writers of her generation. In 1981, she emerged as a powerful voice in Venezuelan and Latin American letters with the founding of Grupo Tráfico alongside poets Igor Barreto, Rafael Castillo Zapata, Alberto Márquez, and Armando Rojas Guardia. She later co-founded the poetry press Pequeña Venecia (1991), where she served as editorial coordinator until 1994. Pantin also co-founded the literary magazine El Puente and directed the Fundación Casa de la Poesía Juan Antonio Pérez Bonalde.
Pantin is the author of numerous poetry collections, including Casa o Lobo (1981), Correo del Corazón (1985), La Canción Fría (1989), Poemas del Escritor (1989), El Cielo de París (1989), Los Bajos Sentimientos (1993), La Quietud (1998), El Hueso Pélvico (2002), Poemas Huérfanos (2002), La Épica del Padre (2002), País (2007), 21 caballos (2011), Bellas Ficciones (2016), Lo que hace el tiempo (2017), El dragón protegido (2021), and Un año y unos meses (2022).
The papers of Yolanda Pantin include the drafts of all her books, early notes and manuscripts, notebooks, essays, articles, personal diaries, drawings, correspondence with fellow writers, and photographs. In addition, the collection holds a trove of family materials—letters, photographs, and private documents from her grandmother, great-grandmother, and other relatives—depicting life on Hacienda Paya, a property that remained in Pantin’s family for centuries. These materials offer a rare view into a now-vanished world of Venezuelan rural life and were a vital source of inspiration for her poetry. A detailed finding aid, titled Documentos de Yolanda Pantin, is available online.
In País. Poesía reunida 1981–2011, published by Editorial Pre-Textos in 2014, Antonio López Ortega characterized Pantin’s work in these words:
“One must recognize in the poetry of Yolanda Pantin a profound and radically original body of work. An extreme commitment—not merely aesthetic—makes her voice one of the most distinctive in the Spanish-American poetic landscape. Her work reveals itself to us as a unique legacy in which we recognize the scattered fragments of being, of meaning.”
Beyond poetry, Pantin is also an accomplished essayist, playwright, children’s author, and editor. Her groundbreaking volume El hilo de la voz: Antología crítica de escritoras venezolanas del siglo XX (2003) remains one of the most important studies on women’s literature in Venezuela.
Visit the following websites to read poems by Yoland Pantin in Spanish and in English translation: