Background
Gonzalo Rojas Pizarro was born on December 20, 1917 in Lebu, Chile. He was the seventh son of a coal miner.
Gonzalo studied literature and law at the Pedagogical Institute at the University of Chile.
university professor writer poet
Gonzalo Rojas Pizarro was born on December 20, 1917 in Lebu, Chile. He was the seventh son of a coal miner.
Gonzalo studied literature and law at the Pedagogical Institute at the University of Chile.
Between 1938-1941 Gonzalo played a part in the surrealist group Mandrágora founded by Braulio Arenas, Teófilo Cid and Enrique Gómez Correa. Seven years later in 1948 his first book of poems was published in Santiago. He taught in a number of small schools, even a German School in Valparaíso, but was eventually hired (1947) in the University of Chile in Valparaíso (now the University of Valparaíso).
In 1952 having finally earned his degree, he was awarded a professorship at the University of Concepción. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, as the Head of the Department of Spanish and later the Director of Summer Courses, Gonzalo was instrumental in establishing a number of workshops that helped define earlier generations of Chilean writers and which brought international writers to Chile to participate in these events and congresses. After the 1973 Chilean coup d'état he was forced to go into exile, an “undocumented person”.
He was stripped of his diplomatic position and was also banned from teaching at any Chilean university. The University of Rostock in East Germany provided him with a placement. He taught at universities in Germany, the United States, Spain, and Mexico.
Thanks to a Guggenheim Fellowship, Gonzalo Rojas went back to Chile in 1979, to Chillán, 400 kilometers to the south of the capital, to live permanently, yet was still unable to teach at a university there. Subsequently, he lived in the United States between 1980 and 1994. From 1980 to 1985, Gonzalo was a visiting professor at Columbia University and the University of Chicago, then from 1985 to 1994, he held the title of professor at Brigham Young University.
On the morning of April 25, 2011, Rojas died as a consequence of a stroke he suffered earlier in February. The government declared two days of official mourning. He was buried in Chillan, Chile.
His poetry has been translated into English, German, French, Portuguese, Russian, Italian, Romanian, Swedish, Chinese, Turkish, Bengali and Greek.
Gonzalo was married three times and is survived by his sons, Rodrigo and Gonzalo.