Event Highlights: Mapuche in Spanish / Chilean in Mapuzugun: Signs of a Mixed Poetic
This event – a virtual reading and conversation with Huilliche-Chilean poet Jaime Luis Huenún – took place on Tuesday, February 9, 2021.
Huenún grew up in Osorno, near the Rahue River, which appears in many of his poems. He normally writes in Spanish, and his work represents an effort to construct a new indigenous poetics combining traditional themes with novel, sometimes experimental styles. His published works include Ceremonias (1999), El pozo negro y otros relatos mapuches (2001), and Los cantos ocultos (2008), and he has anthologized several poetry and short stories books of Latin American indigenous writers. He served from 1993 to 2000 as director of Pewma, a journal of art and literature. He received the Pablo Neruda Prize in 2003 for his verse collection Puerto trakl (2001), and the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005.
Sergio Mansilla Torres, Chilean poet, scholar, and professor of philosophy and humanities at Universidad Austral de Chile, introduced the poet. Christopher Maurer, Professor of Spanish at Boston University, read English translation. Adela Pineda, Professor of Spanish and Director of the Center for Latin American Studies, moderated the event, which was co-sponsored by the BU Arts initiative.
During the event with the poet, Jaime Huenún read part of an essay in progress titled “Mapuche in Castillian/Chilean in Mapuzugun”. From a biographical approach, he unwinds his personal explorations of the world that surrounds him, through poetry, community, and languages. Jaime’s quest speaks of his necessity in life to find dignity in his poetry based on his experience as part of a community of voices that are fighting to recover a dialogue where the indigenous subject can be placed at its center. Jaime Huenún looks not just for the memory of its community but that of a poetic language that enables the reader and the poet to dialogue, confront, and commit to their humanity despite the inequalities and injustices of this world towards indigenous people.