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[1] (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.
[4] Boston University has recently offered courses in “the social poetry of Central America.”[5] More recently, John Stubley has made use of the term as part of the Centre for Social Poetry.
[8] Stubley explores this poetic effect or experience as it occurs between human beings (socio-poetic experience), together with all that they can turn their minds and hands to in relation to the organisation (i.e., "poeticisation"[9]) of social life.
[9] He attempts to create spaces that give expression to imaginations of objective realities at work within the human and social organisms, thereby opening up the way to individual and social transformation.