Raúl Zurita (Santiago, Chile, 1950) studied civil engineering at the Universidad Santa María de Valparaíso. In 1979, with other artists, he helped organize CADA (Colectivo de Acciones de Arte), devoted to creating public art, political in character, as a form of resistance to the military dictatorship.
He has published (in Spanish) Purgatorio/Purgatory (1979); Anteparaíso/Anteparadise (1982); El paraíso está vacío/Paradise is Empty (1984); Canto a su amor desaparecido/Love Song for the Disappeared (1985); Amor de Chile/Love of Chile (1987); Canto de los ríos que se aman/Song of Rivers in Love (1993); La vida nueva/The New Life (1994); Poemas militantes/Militant Poems (2000); INRI/INRI (2003); Mi mejilla es el cielo estrellado/My Cheek is the Starry Sky (2004); Los Países muertos/Dead Countries (2006); LVN (2006); Cities of Water (2007); and In Memoriam (2007). In 1982 his poem "New Life" was written in the sky above New York City. The photographs are now part of Anteparadise. In 1993, "neither pain nor fear," the final phrase of his book New Life, was permanently etched on the sands of the Atacama desert and can be read from above. His poem "Song for a Love Disappeared" appears on the memorial to Chile's disappeared. Zurita has received Guggenheim (USA) and DAAD (Germany) fellowships and has earned the following prizes: Pablo Neruda (1989), Pericles (Italy, 1995), National Prize for Literature (Chile, 2000), and José Lezama Lima (Cuba, 2006). His books and poems have been translated into English, German, Russian, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish, Chinese, Bengali, Turkish, and Hindi.
