Nicanor Parra: Anti-Homage to an Anti-Poet

In collaboration with The Cervantes Institute London and as part of our series Writers in Search of a Reader, we bring you our second author: the poet Nicanor Parra. One of the most original voices of 20th Century literature in any language. A long time physics lecturer who wrote poetry as a "second job" and won The Cervantes Prize in 2011. Founder of the anti-poetry movement, political anarchist and a satirist whose literary purpose was "to tell, not to sing." Member of a cultural dynasty in his native Chile and the last to die -at the age of 103- of a very prestigious group of writers born all in 1914 -Octavio Paz, Julio Cortázar, Adolfo Bioy-Casares, Dylan Thomas, William Burroughs. Friend and foe of Pablo Neruda and a writer who deserves to be much better known among English readers. Introduced by Ignacio Peyró, Director Cervantes Institute London with the participation of the translator and biographer Adam Feinstein and the publisher Pablo Nascimento (great grandson of Parra's first ever publisher). Chaired by Juan Toledo with readings by Pablo Nascimento and Cristóbal -Tololo- Ugarte, Nicanor Parra's own grandson. Recorded live at The Cervantes Institute in March 2018Cervantes Institute Cultural Calendar Videoclip of Nicanor Parra reading in 1977 from Sermones y prédicas del Cristo de Elqui