From where,we, the Refugees Have Come

Introduction
This is a collection of poems I wrote as a contribution, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the United Nation High Commissioner for Refugee (UNHCR), an organisation that has successfully managed to save the lives of millions of people, including Chileans, in our turbulent world. About three thousands Chileans came to Britain during the 1970s thanks to the UNHCR. I am one of those.

I left Chile following the bloody coup of the 11th of September, 1973 carried out by General Pinochet against the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende. I arrived in Britain at the end of September of 1974. In Scotland I become a singer-songwriter, a poet and many other things in part thans to the Solidarity received.

As a writer of poetry (if I can call myself that), I have always been fascinated by my desire to see what piece of writing will appear when confronted with a theme and a piece of paper where I can struggle to reveal (as gracefully as possible) ambiguous, harmonious and inharmonious images.

The following poems written in Edinburgh during the months of May and June this year (2011), try to tell the dramatic story of millions of people, who for many reasons, have been forced to leave their countries to rebuild, with many sacrifices, their lives in new lands. It is to them and the UNHCR that I dedicate this work.

Many thanks to Beth Draper for her exquisite cover design and my long time friend John Gillies for his truthful translations of my poems from Spanish into English.