Chilean activist and poet to speak

Chilean activist, poet and musician Leonel Lienlaf will discuss Poesia Mapuche de la Oralidad a la Escritura/Mapuche Poetry from Spoken to Written at 7 p.m. Monday, March 20, in the Benjamin Mays Center on the Bates College Campus. Lienlaf also will give a poetry reading and performance Poesia: Cosmovision Mapuche Ecologia/Poetry: Mapuche Cosmology and Ecology at 4 p.m. Tuesday, March 21, in the Benjamin Mays Center. Each of these events will feature simultaneous translation and refreshments. The public is invited to attend free of charge. For more information, call 207 786-6462. Lienlaf is a member of the Mapuche tribe of southern Chile. The Mapuche, part of the Araucanian nation, held off the Spanish north of the Bio-Bio River until the late 19th century. Lienlaf won the 1990 Municipal Literature Prize in Chile and acclaim for his 1989 book “Se Ha Despertado El Ave De Mi Corazon (The Bird of My Heart Has Awoken).” Lienlaf also has written scripts for several videos about his own people.

Lienlaf produced a CD of Mapuche poetry and song in 1995, and last August, he assisted in leading a “Gathering in Solidarity of Mapuche Resistance,” held at a soccer stadium in Chile’s capital city, Santiago.