Bihar: Chile envoy visits ancestral home of Indian poet-diplomat
Sep 18, 2023
Nalanda (Bihar) [India], September 18 : Ambassador of Chile to India Juan Angulo visited the ancestral home of poet-diplomat Abhay K at Chhabilapur, near the city of Rajgir in Nalanda district of Bihar on Saturday.
Abhay K posted on X, “Honoured to receive H.E. Juan Angulo, Ambassador of #Chile, the land of poet #PabloNeruda, at my home in #Chhabilapur, #Rajgir, #Nalanda, #Bihar. His visit is very special as I had visited all the 3 houses of #Neruda during my visit to Chile.”
During the visit, Ambassador Angulo paid floral tributes to Abhay K’s late father Rajendra Singh and took a tour of the poet’s ancestral house where he spent his childhood.
Abhay K had visited all three houses of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda in 2018 and had written poems on them which have been published in his poetry collection ‘The Alphabets of Latin America’.
Ambassador Juan Angulo has also played a key role in the forthcoming Spanish edition of ‘The Alphabets of Latin America’ by going through the final draft of the Spanish translation of the book and giving his valuable suggestions.
The ‘Alphabets of Latin America’ is a poetry collection by poet Abhay K which takes one on a roller coaster ride to one of the most culturally and geographically fascinating continents, known for its legendary Maya and Inca civilisations, sizzling Samba and Tango, the world's biggest carnivals, labyrinths of Borges, magic realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, great poetry of Ruben Dario, Pablo Neruda, Gabriela Mistral, Cesare Vallejo, Octavio Paz, fascinating art of Frida Kahlo and Fernando Botero, among others.
As one flips its pages, one finds oneself swimming with pink dolphins in the Amazon River, watching the sunset in the Martian landscape of the Atacama desert, kissing the heights of Machu Picchu and admiring a thousand rainbows at Iguazu Falls.
The book has been widely praised by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Forrest Gander, Prof Jorge Heine of Boston University; and Ruth Padel, Professor of poetry at King’s College, London among others and has been translated into Italian, Malayalam and Spanish. The book has been widely reviewed in publications such as World Literature Today, Agenda Poetry, UK, Beltway, and USA, among others.
As a poet-diplomat Abhay K has built literary bridges between India and Latin America by translating 60 Brazilian poets into English, writing a number of poems on Brazil’s capital city Brasilia which was published as The Prophecy of Brasilia, and getting his edited volume 100 Great Indian Poems translated into Portuguese and Spanish and getting them published in Latin America.
He was elected a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters in Brasilia earlier this year.
