The speaking (r)evolving around poetry: nütram, parliament and ‘oralitura’ in Elicura Chihuailaf

Abstract

A scene of special importance in southern literature is the conversation between the poet and his compadres, comadres, grandparents and grandmothers. In it, sometimes, there is also an instance in which the poet receives a story. In the case of poetry written by Mapuche poets (whether in Spanish and / or Mapuzugun), this conversation scene gains a different dimension since it is related to the notion of the Mapuche world: ‘nütram’. I explore the poetry of the 2020th Chilean National Literature Award, Elicura Chihuailaf, based on the relationships between poetry and nütram, parliament and ‘oralitura’. The nütram is intrinsically related to the parliament - whose political senses of negotiation go back, in the history of the Mapuche people, to the 16th century - and with the inescapable notion of 'oralitura', among other aspects, within the framework of a stressed poetry between the individual and the collective, interwoven with the orality of the community that drives it and supports it.