I have a longstanding interest in Latin America, and especially Chile. I briefly studied abroad there in 2007, and I just totally fell in love with the country: the landscape, the people, the mountains and ocean and delicious empanadas. Oh, and I named my dog after Pablo Neruda because I loved Pablo Neruda when I first found poetry and I love him still.
Chile is the land of poets, and here's an interesting article I recently came across profiling a Mapuche poet (Mapuche is the name given to the indigenous people of Chile). I know Chile is a little trendy now because of Raul Zurita and whatnot, so I thought I would share. I'm really interested in what Guilitraro says about "revenge poetry," in particular, how he seems to see his poetry acting as a defense against the positionality of Mapuche people in modern Chilean society. I'd bet Guilitraro doesn't love Neruda as much as I do; I really wish my Spanish was better so I could read younger contemporary Chilean (and any contemporary poets writing in Spanish, really) poets in their original language. In fact, I had a secret dream of going to South America to translate contemporary female poets in both Chile and Argentina, but I'm pretty sure the ship for that dream has sailed far, far away (because I'm poor and I don't know when I would have time to do that).
But anyway, read the interview.
A Poetic Concept of Identity: An Interview with Mapuche Poet David Aniñir Guilitraro via UpsideDownWorld.org.
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