Pedro Mir

Who was Pedro Mir?

Pedro Julio Mir Valentín was a Dominican poet and writer, named Poet Laureate of the Dominican Republic by Congress in 1984, and a member of the generation of "Independent poets of the 1940s" in Dominican poetry.

His father, a Cuban mechanical engineer, migrated from Cuba to the Dominican Republic in the early years of the Twentieth Century to be hired as Chief of Engineers of the Cristóbal Colón Sugar Refinery. Soon he married a young Puerto Rican girl and had a son whom he named Pedro Julio.

Pedro Julio Mir spent his youth in the sugar refinery, which was located near the city of San Pedro de Macorís. His mother died prematurely, in 1917, which impressed upon him a profound sense of loss which he would later consider the root of his poetical vocation.

In the early years of the 1930s, Pedro Julio Mir started writing and publishing his poems in Dominican newspapers, as well as showing them to his friends. One of those friends, without his consent, took some verses to Juan Bosch, a prominent Dominican writer of the time. Bosch noticed the natural poetic fiber of the young author, but dismissed the verses saying that the poet, though talented, should “turn his eyes to his country”. When Mir was informed of Bosch’s reaction, he decided then to write his first social poems and this time, he sent them to Bosch himself. Bosch made no immediate remark, however he had the verses published very soon in his column of the Listín Diario, the most important Dominican newspaper of the time. The verses appeared under the name Pedro Mir and what later became a prophecy: "Is this young man the social poet we’ve been long waiting for?"