Jorge Artel wrote in genres as diverse as poetry, novels, essays, and short stories. Although a lawyer by profession, he became a prolific journalist who published articles on a variety of topics such as politics, folklore, music, art, literature, and cinema. He is also the author of the novel No es la muerte es el morir (It Is Not Death, It Is Dying, 1979). Despite his contributions in these genres, Artel is known primarily for his poetry; his poems have gained him the reputation of being "the preeminent poet of black expression in contemporary Colombia," as Laurence E. Prescott noted in Without Hatreds or Fears: Jorge Artel and the Struggle for Black Literary Expression in Colombia (2000).

Artel is the pseudonym of Agapito de Arco Coneo. He was born on 27 April 1909 in the city of Cartagena, a former Spanish colonial trading port for black slaves, on the northern Atlantic coast...