Sonqoqui

Sonqoqui is a poetic tour-de-force that takes as its subject eco-critical readings of sacrifice in the historic Inca complex, while also exploring the formal possibilities of a non-fictional verse novella. In particular, Sonqoqui deploys a metaphor of weaving to construct the polyphonic voices of three Inca children who lived and died five hundred years ago.

Offered to the gods in a sacrificial capacocha ritual, which involved a many month journey from the heart of the Inca empire to the world’s highest historically active volcano, the mummified bodies of these children, along with hundreds of ritual objects, were discovered on the summit of Mt. Llullaillaco in 1999. This discovery was the result of an archaeological expedition led by Argentinean anthropologist and archaeologist Dr. María Constanza Ceruti, and National Geographic explorer and anthropologist, Dr. Johan Reinhard. Dry air, extreme cold and the conditions achieved by the nature of the ritual burial have resulted in bodies so well preserved it looks as though the three children are merely sleeping, and might wake at any time.

Frozen in time, these three children, aged fourteen, seven and five, are among the most eloquent mummified remains in the world. Yet to whom is this eloquence addressed and how is it interpreted? Chosen for sacrifice on account of their physical beauty, these children were taken from their respective families and brought to Cusco from differing regions of the Inca domain. It is believed the fourteen-year-old maiden may have been removed from her family while very young and raised in a special house for chosen women, an acllawasi, or House of the Sun Virgins, where she would have been instructed in the arts of weaving and the preparation of a fermented ceremonial maize drink called chicha. There she would have been kept separate from her community and prepared for a life of service.

Kocher travelled to Peru and to Argentina to meet with Dr. Ceruti and to walk the Inca trails that inform the weft and warp of this bioarchaelogically inflected text. An earler version of this manuscript won the Peter Steele Poetry Award in 2019. Part polyphonic biography, part travelogue, and part feminist critique, this is a genre-crossing book that has so far resisted easy classification.