About the Author

Carlos F. Tapia Vaca

Poet born in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia 1995. My poetic work spans multiple disciplines, integrating telecommunications engineering, data processing, performance, and sound composition. I am an M.F.A. candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Texas at El Paso, where I explore my poetics within the academic, educational, and performative realms.

Since 2017, I have immersed myself in literature. I was a finalist for the III Premio Hispanoamericano de Poesía Francisco Ruiz Udiel with my book El Payaso Bélico (Valparaíso Ediciones, 2022) and a member of the poetry workshop Llamarada Verde, led by Gabriel Chávez Casazola. Additionally, I have participated in international poetry festivals such as the XV Encuentro Internacional de Poetas en Ecuador «Poesía en Paralelo Cero» and the IX Encuentro Internacional de Poesía en Bolivia «Ciudad de los Anillos».

In music, I have been a percussionist in various projects since 2013, composing and recording percussive lines, including in the album Realidad (2019) by Capo de Gilcapi. I am also a co-founder of Mandriles Sindicalizados Films (2023), a project that merges poetry and film to explore symbolism.

My poetic work sits at the intersection of data processing and random chaos, exploring how the speed and repetition of computed information alters a poem’s temporality. In this sense, my poetics engage with the spatial organization of the text, the physical and virtual body, voices, symbols, and the impact of performance on meaning construction.

I am currently developing the Frente (de)Liberación Poética «Saturnino Parral Perales», approaching it through poetry, the body, and sound. This project seeks to give voice to internal and external aspects that lack representation, granting them agency through fictitious institutions such as the Sindicato de Payasos “Clodomiro Cayuya”, Fraternidad Poética “Piñas Guarayas del Desierto”.

One of my ongoing performative projects, PIÑAS.PAYASOS.SATURNINOS, brings this exploration into action. Through a series of acts—grouping, selection, organization, writing, acting, and prayer—participants confront the possibility of agency, action, and community around the symbol of Saturnino Parral Perales.

My poetic pursuit aims for a transformation toward integration and coexistence, both internally through writing and communally through performance and education. Exploring the body—as symbol, text, and action—is central to my work, expanding poetry into new sensory dimensions.