News at Eleven: Chile is a land of poets,

having produced such greats as Nobel-Prize winners Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda as well as world-class practitioners like Vicente Huidobro, Nicanor Parra, Gonzalo Rojas and many, many more.

So it must have come as no surprise to Chileans, I imagine, and was undoubtedly considered a "badge of honor" when Víctor Segovia, one of the Copiapó miners, was dubbed the "mine poet." He had kept a journal and sent messages to the surface of the Atacama Desert during the miners' horrendous ordeal. Víctor Zamora, another of the miners, was also identified as a poet.

from CNN: In Chile, poetry in bedrock and blood

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