Nicanor Parra

Nicanor Parra
Born Nicanor Segundo Parra Sandoval
(1914-09-05) 5 September 1914
San Fabián de Alico, Chile
Occupation Poet
Awards Miguel de Cervantes Prize (2011)

Nicanor Segundo Parra Sandoval (born 5 September 1914) is a Chilean poet, mathematician, and physicist. He is considered an influential poet in Chile and throughout Latin America. Some rank him among the most important poets of Spanish language literature.[1] Parra describes himself as an "anti-poet," due to his distaste for standard poetic pomp and function; after recitations he exclaims "Me retracto de todo lo dicho" ("I take back everything I said").

Life

Parra, the son of a schoolteacher, was born in 1914 in San Fabián de Alico, Chile, near Chillán in southern Chile.[2] He comes from the artistically prolific Parra family of performers, musicians, artists, and writers. His sister, Violeta Parra, was a folk singer, as was his brother Roberto Parra Sandoval.

In 1933, he entered the Instituto Pedagógico of the University of Chile, and qualified as a teacher of mathematics and physics in 1938, one year after his first book, Cancionero sin Nombre, appeared. After teaching in Chilean secondary schools, in 1943 he enrolled in Brown University in the United States to study physics. In 1948, he attended Oxford University to study cosmology.[3] He returned to Chile as a professor at the Universidad de Chile in 1946. Since 1952, Parra has been professor of theoretical physics in Santiago and has read his poetry in England, France, Russia, Mexico, Cuba, and the United States. He has published dozens of books.

Parra chooses to leave behind the conventions of poetry; his poetic language renounces the refinement of most Latin American literature and adopts a more colloquial tone. His first collection, Poemas y Antipoemas (1954) is a classic of Latin American literature, one of the most influential Spanish poetry collections of the twentieth century. It is cited as an inspiration by American Beat writers such as Allen Ginsberg.[4][5]

Nicanor Parra at the age of 100

Parra turned 100 in September 2014.[6]

Awards

“ As far I know, only the Mexican poet Mario Santiago has made a lucid reading of his work. We others have only seen a dark meteorite. ”
— Roberto Bolaño about Nicanor Parra in Entre paréntesis

Parra has been proposed on four occasions for the Nobel Prize in Literature.[7] On December 1, 2011, Parra won the Spanish Ministry of Culture's Cervantes Prize, the most important literary prize in the Spanish-speaking world.[8][9] On June 7, 2012, he won the Premio Iberoamericano de Poesía Pablo Neruda.[10]

List of works

English translations

References

  1. ↑ Radio Universidad de Chile (Spanish)
  2. ↑ "Nicanor Parra un antipoeta, matemático y físico". EL UNIVERSAL (in Spanish). EL UNIVERSAL, Compañía Periodística Nacional. 1 December 2011. Retrieved 21 June 2012.
  3. ↑ Los desconocidos años de Nicanor en Oxford, Qué Pasa (in Spanish), 05-08-2009
  4. ↑ "Chilean poet Nicanor Parra wins Cervantes Prize". CBC News. 1 December 2011.
  5. ↑ "Nicanor Parra Havana 1965". Allen Ginsberg Project. Allen Ginsberg Project. Retrieved 21 June 2012.
  6. ↑ (Spanish)Nicanor Parra cumple 100 años y dice: “Es por la cueca que estoy aquí”
  7. ↑ "Nicanor Parra va nuevamente tras el Nobel, respaldado por Bachelet". Emol.com. 5 January 2012. Retrieved 7 September 2014.
  8. ↑ "Nicanor Parra awarded Cervantes Prize". BBC News. 1 December 2011.
  9. ↑ Rodriguez M., Javier (1 December 2011). "El poeta chileno Nicanor Parra, premio Cervantes". El Pais. Retrieved 1 December 2011.
  10. ↑ "Nicanor Parra gana Premio de Poesía Pablo Neruda". Cultura Latercera (in Spanish). Latercera. 6 July 2012. Retrieved 21 June 2012.
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