Chile’s Beloved “Anti-Poet” Nicanor Parra Dies at 103

Nicanor Parra, one of Chile’s most beloved poets (and anti-poets), has died at the age of 103.

Parra created a name for himself in 1954 with Poems and Antipoems, as well as picking up Chile’s National Literary Prize in 1969 and the Cervantes Prize in 2011.

“When there is humor, irony, sarcasm, when the author is making fun of himself and so of humanity, then the author is not singing but telling a story — that is an anti-poem,” he told The New York Times in 1968.

Nicanor Segundo Parra Sandoval — one of nine Parra children — was born on September 15, 1914, in San Fabián de Alico, in southern Chile.

Image: Associated Press