“Poems are the Dreams of the Earth”

Readings and talk by Raúl Zurita, one of the most important contemporary poets of Latin America and recipient of numerous awards, including the National Literary Prize of Chile 

Raúl Zurita will be accompanied by translator Anna Deeny Morales who will read in English

Welcome: Ms Omita Goyal, Chief Editor, IIC
Introduction by Dr. Sharmistha Mohanty

 
Raúl Zurita is one of the most extraordinary poets of our times. His is the compassion and hope and faith that come from having confronted despair. Zurita was arrested, when a young man, under the regime of General Pinochet in Chile. All his life his poems have spoken of the extreme injustice and suffering of the Chilean people. The devastation of the Chilean experience made it necessary for him to find new poetic forms, because those forms that already existed were incapable of containing these new brutalities. Although Zurita begins from tragedy, he ends with the beauty and hope of the human condition. He has often said, “The task is not to write books or to paint paintings, it is to make life a work of art and that is the task still at hand.” 

(Collaboration: Almost Island)