Rereading Gabriela Mistral

The talk on the Chilean poetess and intellectual Gabriela Mistral, organized by the Worldwide Association of Women Journalists and Writers (AMMPE World) on January 17, ended with the enthusiasm to go out and buy Gabriela Mistral's books. The title of the virtual meeting was "Rereading Gabriela Mistral" and, for an hour, the director of the National Library of Chile, Pedro Pablo Zegers; the doctor of philosophy and letters of the University of Columbia in New York, Marie-Lise Gazarian; and the academic of the Department of Languages, Literature and Foreign Cultures of the Università degli Studi Roma Tre, Angela Di Matteo, spoke about the current situation of the figure of the Nobel Prize in Literature and about her works Desolación and Poema de Chile. Desolación was Gabriela Mistral's first book of poems and prose, published in 1922 by the Institute of Spain at Columbia University. A professor at that university, the Spaniard Federico de Onís, encouraged Gabriela Mistral to publish her work, which celebrated its 100th anniversary last year. During the talk, Zegers told how the publication was conceived. Gazarian spoke about the figure of Mistral, whom she met in New York. She also referred to her book "El baúl de los recuerdos: diálogo en torno a Gabriela Mistral", which she published in 2022. For this work she interviewed Zegers, who was director of the Gabriela Mistral Museum in Vicuña and Curator of the Writer's Archive of the National Library. Di Matteo spoke about Poema de Chile, posthumous work of the poetess published in 1967 by her executor Doris Dana. During the talk, she read the first poem of this book, "Hallazgo". The talk ended with questions and comments from the audience. Among the attendees were the presidents of the national chapters AMMPE Guatemala, Ana María de Eskenazy, of AMMPE Italy, Patricia Mayorga, and AMMPE Chile, Verónica López, and the past presidents of AMMPE World, Noelia Miranda and Eugenia Martínez. Also the Magellanic journalist and writer Patricia Stambuk, member of the Chilean Academy of Language. With this talk, the current world presidency of AMMPE World opened its program of activities for 2023. These meetings are part of the road to the World Congress to be held in Punta Arenas at the end of September next year.