Raúl Zurita
| Raúl Zurita | |
|---|---|
 at the Biblioteca Nacional de Santiago, 25 April 2013 | |
| Born |
1950 Santiago de Chile |
| Language | Spanish |
| Nationality | Chile |
| Education | Federico Santa María Technical University |
| Genres | Poetry |
| Notable award(s) | Chilean National Prize for Literature |
Raúl Zurita Canessa (born 1950) is a Chilean poet. He won the Chilean National Prize for Literature in 2000.
Biography
Raúl Zurita was born in Santiago de Chile in 1950, where he spent his childhood and school years. In 1967 he began his studies of Civil Engineering at the Federico Santa María Technical University in Valparaiso as well as Mathematics at the School of Technical Engineering in Santiago. When on 11 September 1973, Chile’s socialist’s government was overthrown by a military coup, Raúl Zurita was arrested and detained with almost one thousand others in the hold of a ship; a traumatic experience for the then 22-years-old. Zurita spent four years earning his living as a computer salesman during a period of financial hardship. At the same time he was a guest reader at the Faculty of Philosophy at the Universidad de Chile in Santiago, where he met writers and intellectuals such as Nicanor Parra, Ronald Kay, Christian Hunneus and Enrique Lihn. The first of his poems to be published appeared in 1975 in “Manuscritos”, the Philosophy Faculty’s publication. Four years later “Purgatorio” was published, the first part of a poetic trilogy which Zurita would not conclude for another fourteen years. The book became a huge success. Together with friends Raúl Zurita founded the artists action group “Colectivo de Accion de Arte”, CADA, in protest against the Pinochet government, but despair in the face of the dictatorship’s regime of terror gradually took hold. No longer wanting to witness the pain surrounding him, he attempted to burn his eyes with ammonium acid but fortunately failed.
In 1982, the second part of Zurita’s poetic trilogy entitled “Anteparaiso” was published. Completion of this book went hand in hand with the project to have 15 verses of the poem written by five aeroplanes in eight-kilometre high letters across the sky over New York. These verses which Zurita had written to draw attention to the minorities of the world could be seen throughout large parts of New York.
In 1984, Raúl Zurita was awarded a scholarship by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for his poetical works. Afterwards he gave readings at held lectures at several North American universities, including Harvard, Yale, Stanford and Berkeley. In 1989 he was awarded the Pablo Neruda Prize for his lifetime poetical achievements. In 1990, Zurita lectured as visiting professor at the Universidad de Chile and in the same year he was made his country’s cultural attaché to Rome by Chile’s democratic government under President Patricio Aylwin. During the Expo ’92 in Sevilla his works were chosen to represent Chilean poetry. In 2000 he received Chile's national prize for literature.
In 1993 an extensive third volume concluded Raúl Zurita’s poetic trilogy. “La Vida Nueva” draws on Dante’s “Divina Commedia”in tracing and appraising the Chilean people’s twenty-year odyssey of suffering and hope and fits its author into place in line with the literary and political tradition of Gabriel Mistral, Pablo Neruda, Nicanor Parra, and other formidable Chilean poet. "Zurita", a volume of poetry, appeared in 2011; Raúl Zurita, who suffers from Parkinson's disease, declared this to be his last publication. However, in late 2013, Copper Canyon Press, with support from The Poetry Foundation, will publish Pinholes in the Night: Essential Poems from Latin America, an intensely focused bilingual anthology of Latin American poetry. This anthology, selected and compiled by Zurita, contains one poem by each of fifteen poets, ranging from Pablo Neruda to Ernesto Cardinal to Cesar Vallejo, and spans the twentieth century.
His books have been translated into English, German, Swedish, Bengali, Chinese, Italian and Russian.
Currently he is translating himself the Divina Commedia into Spanish.[1]
Work
- Purgatory (1979)
- Anteparaíso (1982)
- Paradise is empty (1984)
- Song of love gone (1985)
- The love of Chile (1987)
- Song of the rivers they love (1993)
- The New Life (1994)
- The white day (2000)
- About love, suffering, and the new millennium (2000)
- Militants Poems (2000)
- INRI (2003)
- Dead Poems (2006)
- Countries Dead (2007)
- Cities Water (2008)
- In Memoriam (2008)
- Five fragments (2008)
- Journal of war (2009)
- Dreams for Kurosawa (2010)
- Zurita (2011)
- Added to The &NOW Awards 2: The Best Innovative Writing (2013) [2]
- Pinholes in the Night: Essential Poems from Latin America (Copper Canyon Press, 2013)
Awards
- 1984 Guggenheim Fellow Fudación
- Pablo Neruda Prize 1988
- Pericles Gold Award 1994, Italy
- Municipal Poetry Prize 1995, Santiago, Chile, New life
- National Literature Prize, Chile (2000)
- Künstlerprogramm Fellow DAAD, Berlin 2002
- Casa de las Americas Prize for Poetry 2006 José Lezama Lima, Havana, Cuba, by INRI*
References
External links
- Raúl Zurita en Memoria Chilena. Además de un esbozo y una cronología del author, aquí se puede descargar gratuita y legalmente, además de artículos, sus libros Purgatorio, Canto a su amor desaparecido y El amor de Chile
- A Review of Purgatory, translated by Anna Deeny, by Forrest Gander at Jacket
- Raúl Zurita en letras.s5.com
- Benoît Santini. El cielo y el desierto como soportes textuales de los actos poéticos de Raúl Zurita
- Raúl Zurita en Blue Flower Arts New York
- Raúl Zurita en Poetry Foundatión - links to Written on the Sky, an interview conducted by Daniel Borzutzky who talks with Zurita about life after Pinochet.
- International Poets in Conversation: Raúl Zurita and Forrest Gander at The Poetry Foundation
- "Raúl Zurita: International Poets in Conversation / Poetry Lectures". The Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 2012-01-21.- A conversation between Zurita and American poet Forrest Gander.
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