Social poetry

Social poetry is poetry which performs a social function or contains a level of social commentary. The term seems to have first appeared as a translation from the original Spanish Poesia Socíal, used to describe the post-Spanish-civil-war poetry movement of the 1950s and 60s (including poets such as Blas de Otero). Later, José Eduardo Limón, for example, has used it to describe Mexican-American Chicano poetry in Texas during the same period. Elsewhere, others have used the term to describe English-language poets such as W.H. Auden and George Bernard Shaw. Boston University has recently offered courses in “the social poetry of Central America.”