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Chilean Poet Raul Zurita

Poetry reading by Chilean poet Raul Zurita followed by a round table discussion.

Thursday, April 23, 2009
4:30 PM - 6:30 PM
306 Royce Hall
Herbert Morris Room
Los Angeles, CA United States

Raúl Zurita (Santiago, Chile, 1950) is arguably the most powerful poetic voice in Latin America today. His compelling rhythms combine epic and lyric tones, public and most intimate themes, grief and joy. Despite having been arrested and tortured under the Pinochet dictatorship, Zurita’s prevailing attitude in his Dantesque trilogy Purgatorio (1979), Anteparaíso (1982), and La vida nueva (1994) is a deep love for everything and everybody in the world. The spectacular avant-garde side of his poetry was seen in the United States when planes—wrote in Spanish—one of his poems in the skies over Manhattan in 1982. It is no accident that Zurita has been translated into Bengali, Chinese, English, German, Italian, and Russian. Zurita will read from his works and will participate in a round table discussion with:

Prof. Verónica Cortínez, Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Prof. Manfred Engelbert, University of Göttingen, Germany

Prof. Jacobo Sefamí, UC Irvine

Paula Thorrington, doctoral candidate

Cost: Free and open to the public