Early life

Oscar Hahn is the son of Ralph Hahn Valdés and Enriqueta Garcés Sánchez. He lost his father at the young age of 4 years old on 28 March 1943. His first traces to poetry began in his adolescence in Rancagua, Chile. After falling in love during a childhood relationship, Hahn felt compelled to write his first poems. He received his primary and secondary education in Iquique, Chile at the Don Bosco Salesian College and the Lyceum of Men. Hahn later attended the University of Chile where he graduated as a professor of Spanish.

Career

In 1959, while at the University of Chile, he won the Student Federation of Chile's Prize in Poetry. In 1961, at only 22 years old, he won the Society of Chilean Writers' Alerce Prize for the work This Black Rose (Esta Rosa Negra).^[3] In 1967 he won the Unique Prize of the First Contest in Northern Poetry of the University of Chile for the (then) regional seat of Antofagasta.^[4]

He studied and set himself to the University of Chile's Curriculum in the Teaching of Literature while in residence at Arica.^[5] In 1972 he was awarded the degree of Master of Arts by the University of Iowa, US^[6] and was named a member of the International Writers' Program there.^[7]

In 1972, when he returned to Chile, he took a job as adjunct professor at the University of Chile, Arica. In the next year, 1973, his life would change dramatically, due to political developments in his home country; on September 11 of that year, during the Chilean coup of 1973 he was detained by the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, which had violently overthrown the government of the democratically elected President Salvador Allende.^[1] Hahn's book, Love's Disease was the only poetry book that was banned during the dictatorship.

Later interviewed about his experiences, Hahn remarked: "September 11 is a difficult date for me to forget, not only on account of the things that happened in the country at large but also because they took me prisoner, and they took me as a prisoner the very same night of September 11, which was deadly serious, since in that very moment they were just killing people without even asking them their names, just totally at random. It was a lottery, and I believe that I'm alive thanks to sheer chance, because there were people who were detained with me and they shot them dead; this could just as well happened to me."^[8]

Hahn left Chile in 1974 to set down new roots in the USA.^[9] He was awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by the University of Maryland College Park,^[9] and between 1978 and 1988 he collaborated in the composition of the Handbook of Latin American Studies issued by the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. In 1988, Hahn then moved to Iowa City, Iowa and began teaching at The University of Iowa. In 2008, Hahn retired from teaching and moved back to Chile to focus more on his poetry.

He is a member of the Chilean Academy of Language,^[10] and sat on the organizing committee for the Comités del V Congreso Internacional de la Lengua Española (CILE).^[11]