With the power of his words, Raúl Zurita opened the Poetry Out Loud festival.

▲ Poetry, body, and light were the central elements of the presentation in Chapultepec. Photo by Víctor Camacho

Angel Vargas

La Jornada Newspaper, Sunday, October 19, 2025, p. 3

Like a rock star, Raúl Zurita was greeted and dismissed amidst screams and overwhelming applause from the audience that filled the Alicia Urreta Forum at Casa del Lago to the brim on Friday night to hear the poetry of the distinguished Chilean author firsthand.

Considered the most important living Spanish-speaking poet, he was the keynote speaker at the inaugural session and the Poetry Out Loud 2025: The Voice, Principle of Touch festival, organized by Casa del Lago, which closes today.

Those who attended this space at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Chapultepec witnessed and participated in an epiphany guided by the words and the slow, serene, and at times delicate delivery of the poet born 75 years ago in Santiago.

The author of Purgatorio offered a Lectura furiosa (Furious Reading), the name given to the poetry concert in which Zurita brought his poem "Verás" (You'll See) to life, along with others, accompanied by music and lighting interventions by the Delight Lab collective.

Poetry, body, and light were the elements of this presentation, which refers to Verás, a monumental poetic intervention carried out by this artistic duo in March 2024 in Caleta Vitor, Chile, whose visual documentation is exhibited on the railings of Casa del Lago.

Frail in appearance, the poet looked imposing and somewhat severe sitting at the front of the stage, in a sturdy wooden chair with soft cushions, amid shadows that were sporadically broken by beams of light of varying chromaticity.

Behind him were projected landscapes of the cliffs used as canvases in the aforementioned great work, which consisted of projecting the aforementioned poem onto them.

Holding his poems with a trembling pulse, the author's fragile voice contrasted with the devastating power of his poetic words, which spoke of resistance, longing, and melancholy as well as celebrating nature, love, and life.

A contemplative and respectful silence from the audience embraced and embraced the poet, as it did for almost the entire reading. A perhaps ceremonial atmosphere was broken in the final stretch, with the last texts of the session.

This was the case with "Song to Disappeared Love," a powerful poem that evokes a love that clings to nature as a refuge from the violence and horror of the era of political repression and torture under the dictatorship in his homeland.

After nearly 20 minutes, amid frantic shouts from the audience and with a breath that seemed to choke at times, Zurita concluded with the poem with which he concluded his speech upon receiving the 2016 Ibero-American Poetry Prize and with which, he said on that occasion, he would like to close his life.

“Then, crushing my burned cheek / against the rough grains of this stony soil – like a good South American – I will raise my face to the sky for one more minute / crying / because I believed in happiness / I will have seen the irrefutable stars again.”

A subtle bow and the poet stood up, helped by two people who assisted him on his slow walk towards the exit of the stage, where he disappeared amidst applause, the damp darkness of the night and the overwhelming emotion of those who had just heard him.

Their presentation was preceded by Delight Lab—formed by Octavio and Andrea Gana—who for almost half an hour offered Nostalgia for the Incommensurable, a poetic, light- and sound-based concert aimed at contemplating memory as a vital echo and opening a search for meaning from loss.