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In his book Confidential message to Chileans, Elicura Chihuailaf wrote: “Let’s talk, I ask you”. The Quechurewe poet has sought a dialogue with Chilean society through his work. At the end of July, on the occasion of his nomination for the National Prize for Literature, he told Third: “I receive it as a possibility of opening a window, which can show that there is a beautiful culture that is revolving in the cities of Chile. Obtaining the award would be that: thinking that Chile begins to be a fairer country, where a door is opened to conversation ”.
Born in 1952, author of poems such as Of blue dreams and contradreamsElicura Chihauilaf today became the first Mapuche poet to receive the National Prize for Literature.
The jury was made up of the Minister of Culture, Consuelo Valdés; the writer Diamela Eltit, as the last winner; María Eugenia Góngora, representative of the Chilean Academy of Language; the essayist Adriana Valdés and the Mapuche poet María Isabel Lara Millapán, nominated by the Council of Culture; the rector of the University of Chile, Ennio Vidaldi, and the rector of the UMCE, Jaime Espinosa, representative of the Council of Rectors.
The poet received the news in Asturias, Spain, where he has been since March, waiting for the moment to return to his land. After completing literary activities in France and Spain, and when he was preparing to travel to the Sydney Biennial, in Australia, the pandemic reached him in Madrid. The most critical moment of the emergency passed in Barcelona, and since the end of May it has been on the outskirts of Oviedo.
Presented for the award by the Universidad de La Frontera, Elicura Chihuailaf triumphed in his third application. The award, the most important that the State gives to writers, had among its nominees poets such as Rosabetty Muñoz, Elvira Hernández, Carmen Berenguer, Claudio Bertoni and Tomás Harris, among others.
The Mapuche poet’s candidacy achieved wide adherence from artists, academics, musicians, and writers. In a letter of support, they affirm that “their books and their cultural activism and in favor of biodiversity, open every day paths and possibilities for other ways of imagining our lives, in a time of deep civilizational crisis”.
Born in the Quechurewe community, in the foothills of Region IX, Elicura Chihuailaf grew up listening to his grandmother’s stories in Mapudungún. Son of rural teachers, with his family he learned that trees and birds, wind and rain speak. By the stove he listened to the songs and riddles of his people. In this way he connected with poetry, and when he traveled to the boarding school in Temuco, in adolescence, he began to write. “I was 15 years old. I started writing out of nostalgia, looking at the chestnut trees on Avenida Balmaceda, the drizzle, not even thinking about books, ”he says.
Today, Elicura Chihuailaf (1952) is the author of an outstanding poetic work, recognized with numerous distinctions and translated into French, English and Italian, among other languages. Through poetry books, as well as the essay Confidential message to Chileans and the memories Life is a blue cloud the poet has given voice to the memory of his ancestors and also opened a dialogue with Chilean society.
The poet and National Prize for Literature, Raúl Zurita, applauded his award: “I congratulate my brother Elikura Chihuailaf from the bottom of my soul, with him a great poet has been awarded, the author of Confidential message to Chileans, which also implies the first recognition that the State of Chile makes to the culture of an extraordinary people, the Mapuche people, to whom we owe so much and from whom we have so much to learn. I would also like to congratulate the other applicants, all notable poets, who demonstrate the enormous variety and richness of the poetry that continues to be written in this territory ”.
Zurita added: “Thus it is urgent to return to the annuity of this award to reduce, in part, the regrettable postponements that occur on each occasion.”
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