The recipient of “Bridges of Struga” for 2022, the award for the best debut poetry book from a young author (under the age of 35), awarded by the “Struga Poetry Evenings” in cooperation with UNESCO, is the Italian poet Gerardo Masuccio. This decision was announced at the official event at the Macedonian Academy of Arts and Sciences, where, alongside the announcement of the SPE Laureate, the World Poetry Day on the 21st of March was celebrated with a poetry reading by prominent poets, all of them members of the Macedonian PEN Center and the Macedonian Writer’s Association. The award will be presented to the laureate during the “Bridges” poetic reading, one of the central events of this year’s festival edition, planned to take place from the 24th to 29th August. Gerardo Masuccio was born in Battipaglia, fifty miles south of Naples, in 1991, growing up in nearby Olevano sul Tusciano. After studying Classics in Eboli, he moved to Milan in 2010 where he graduated first in Authors’ Rights and then in Book Publishing from Bocconi University. Since 2012 he has edited the series Capoversi for Bompiani. In 2020 he founded Utopia, a publishing house specialising in literary fiction and nonfiction. It is the Italian editor of Nicanor Parra, Ana Blandiana, Anne Carson, Ko Un, Ida Vitale, Naja Marie Aidt and Ljubomir Levčev. His own poetry has appeared in anthologies, journals, specialised sites and non-commercial pamphlets. Fin qui visse un uomo is his first book, and has been well received by reviewers nationally. Shortlisted for six literary prizes, it has won the most important Italian prize for a poetic debut – the 32nd edition of the Premio Camaiore – as well as the 61st Premio San Domenichino, as best poetry title of the year. About the book: Gerardo Masuccio's first work is a melancholy and aware hymn to the mystery of being, in constant balance between the precariousness of life, the silencing of truth and the strangeness of the world. With an alert, measured and recognizable style, Fin qui visse un uomo is the documentary proof of a life marked by the transience of relationships and love, in which the poet becomes a witness to his own marginality and the voice of a redemption that gives substance to his own continuing life.
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