Award "Bridges of Struga"
Award "Bridges of Struga" is UNESCO award
Kако реномиран светски фестивал, „Струшките вечери на поезијата“ се одржуваат под покровителство на УНЕСКО, при што се доделува и награда на УНЕСКО „Мостови на Струга“ за најдобра поетска збирка од поет-дебитант од светот по пат на меѓународен конкурс.
Наградата е востановена во 2003 година. Прв добитник е Ангело В. Суарез (Филипини)
Awarded Poets
Vladan Krečković
Vladan Krečković was born in 1988 in Belgrade. He graduated Journalism and Communicology at the Faculty of Political Sciences at the Belgrade University. His poetry has been published in several literary magazines, such as Gradina, Koraci, Buktinja and web portals Astronaut, Strane, Afirmator. Paris, Texas is his first book of poetry. Beside poetry, he also writes prose and his short story “The Vanished” was included in the 41 st edition of Rukopisi - a collection of prose and poetry by authors from Ex-Yu countries.
"His debut collection has been published by Enklava. The book review states:
The very title of Vladan Krečković's debut poetry book Paris, Texas signifies in what way we should read the poems in front of us. Referring to the Wim Wender's cult classic, but also to the movie Chungking Express by an equally cult director - Wong Kar-Wai, that tell us the story of how life can be apathetic and meaningless after emotional break-ups, Vladan Krečković tells us, in a very subtle and non-pretentious way, the story of separations by trying to find his standpoint in the journeys, in looking at the family photographs, in communicating with a stranger who left a comment on YouTube, in the constant reminiscing and reconsidering, to find a supporting point from which his life can continue on its usual course. This book offers a different life perspective of a romantic loss, without any pathos, and represents a courageous step into the field of new sensibility."
Martina Straková
Martina Straková studied cultural sciences and graduated from the Faculty of Arts at the Comenius University in Bratislava. Later she received scholarships at leading German universities and her PhD title in Philosophy. Since 2013, she has been co-organizing the International Poetry Festival Ars Poetica, where she holds a free creative writing workshop Bring Your Poem offered to the wide public as a regular part of the festival program. She is dedicated to writing poetry, fairy tales for children, painting and artistic translation from/to German and English language. She debuted with her poetry collection called Postcards from Invisible Places (Pohľadnice z neviditeľných miest, Ars Poetica, 2019). She lives and works in Bratislava.
Poem:IN A TIDAL FLOW
Monika Herceg
Monika Herceg was born 1990 in Sisak. She studies Physics at the Department of Physics at the University of Rijeka. Lives in Zagreb. Her poems have been published in various magazines both in Croatian and regional portals, as well as on the Third Program of the Croatian Radio. In addition to the “Goran” Prize for Young Poets, she has won the second prize of the international poetry competition Castello di Duino 2016 and the first prize of the regional competition for humorous-satirical genre "Stevan Sremac" 2017.
Poem:DEAF CATS
Pauli Tapio
Pauli Tapio was born in 1986 in the northern Finnish city of Oulu. As a child his family spent several years living abroad, in the USA, in Czechoslovakia and in the United Kingdom. As an adult he has lived in Helsinki, Finland, and in St. Petersburg, Russia. He has studied Finnish literature and Russian at the university of Helsinki and has worked as a literary critic, an event organiser and a translator. Tapio has translated books by such Russian authors as Sergei Dovlatov and Svetlana Alexievich as well as poetry by young Russian poets. He is currently employed by the University of Helsinki where he teaches courses and conducts PhD research into the formation of vers libre in modernistic Finnish poetry. Tapio’s first collection of poetry, Sparrows and Time, was published in 2017. In the same year it won the prestigious Helsingin Sanomat book award, given to the best debut work of prose or poetry of that year. In his poetry, Tapio takes an interest in the rhythms of the Finnish language. He is also very interested in the formal and stylistic conventions of different poetic tradition and he likes to adapt time worn forms and constraints into contemporary contexts whilst maintaining an engagement with the innovative contemporary poetry of his native language and other languages. Thematically, his first collection investigates the fate of modern individuality as it is caught in the convulsions of world history and world politics.
Goran Čolakhodžić
Born in Zagreb in 1990, Goran Čolakhodžić currently lives in Samobor. After completing primary education in Samobor and grammar school in Zagreb, he graduated at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University in Zagreb. He majored in English and Romanian language and literature. In late 2014 he wrote the volume of poems that earned him the Croatian “Goranova nagrada za mlade pjesnike” (Goran’s Prize for Young Poets) in March 2015. The book was published in Zagreb under the title Na kraju taj vrt (In the End the Garden) that same year. In July 2015 he won the frst prize of the Zagreb no-budget festival “Petrarca Fest” for the best sonnet. In 2016 he was selected to participate in the Versopolis project as a representative of Croatia. He has participated in public readings, discussions, various literary events, juries of minor literary contests, and other related projects. His poems have been translated into English, Romanian, Polish and Dutch.
Runa Svetlikova
Runa Svetlikova is a poet, writer and graphic designer. She was born in 1982, she studied graphic design, language and literature. She made her debut in 2014 with the poetry collection Padded White Room, published by Marmer Press. The book was already recognized and awarded with the prestigious prize Herman de Conink for best debut book in 2015, the Jo Peters Poetry Award (2016), and was also nominated for C. Buddingh’-prize in 2015. In 2016 fot this book she won the international poetic award “Bridges of Struga” for best debutant book is awarded by Struga Poetry Evenings together with UNESCO. She does regular readings and organizes small poetry festivals.
Paula Bozalongo
Paula Bozalongo was born on 15 April 1991 in Granada, Spain. She studied architecture in Madrid. Her book “December and We Kissed” was awarded the prestigious prize of the “Hiperion” edition in Spain, which has been awarded for books of poetry by a young author for 30 years now. Her poems have been published in significant literary magazines, not only in her motherland, but other countries of the world as well.
Her debut book “December and We Kissed” through 26 poems, divided in two parts, brings forth a poetic language which radiates with a characteristic sensibility, not burdened by some adventurous rhetoric, experimental and metaphorical expression. This is poetry carrying reflections of certain insecurities and fears, indecisiveness in search for closeness. This is by no means some old-fashioned sentimentality, but a spirit-filled expression of intimacy which brings sincerity expressed in a special way, filled with evocative images influenced even by architecture.[su_accordion]
[su_spoiler title="Paula Bozalongo" style="fancy"]
The lyric subject reflects an intimate lyric temperament through the elegant and bold changes in the poetic images, through elegiac tonality in which their constant transformations take place. The tranquil tone of this self-reflective lyric is suddenly interrupted by contrapuntal images which sometimes bring contradiction and amazement, and act as an emotional cadence in the poem. Such poetic form allows the young poetess to harness in the poem all of her reminiscences, allusions, emotional outpourings, memories, doubts and fears through the skillful interchange of the story and the confession and create an exceptionally suggestive lyric which challenges the reader with constant interruptions of this confidential tone through constant juxtapositions of images.
This poetry arises from that belief in the transforming power of emotions which fill the poetic images with a tendency to rediscover and change the internal logic of time and space. Hence this quest for love, for intimacy is emphasized through the reflected representations of places and objects that contain the coldness and alienation, and it is entwined in the poem as a muffled cry in the storm (“The Prestige of Crying”). These introspections of disappointments, longings and dreams become contemplative images which contain geometric shapes and structures, architectonic metaphors, such as in the poem “Geometry” where in cubic manner she draws out the silhouette of her loved one in triangles, trapezoids, circles and ellipses. “I lack dimensions/ to explain the world”, as she herself says in her poem, she announces another name whose poetic quest for a new poetic expression will certainly bring poetic creations which will attract the attention of the European and world literary public.
Лирскиот субјект одразува еден интимен лирски темперамент низ елегантните и смели измени на поетските слики, низ еден елегичен тоналитет во кој се случуваат нивните постојани преобразби. Спокојниот тон на оваа само-рефлексивна лирика одеднаш го нарушуваат контрапунктни слики кои понекогаш донесуваат спротивставеност и зачуденост, и делуваат како емотивна каденца во текот на песната. Ваквото поетско обликување ѝ овозможува на младата поетеса да ги впрегне во песната сите реминисценции, алузии, емотивни изблици, сеќавањата, сомнежите и стравовите низ вештите измени со приказната и исповедноста и да создаде исклучително сугестивна лирика која го предизвикува читателот со постојаното нарушување на таквиот доверлив тон преку постојаните јукстапозиции на сликите.
Оваа поезија извира од таа верба во трансформирачка моќ на емоциите кои ги натопуваат поетските слики во тежнение повторно да ја откријат и да ја изменат внатрешната логика на времето и просторот. Оттаму таа потрага по љубов, по блискост е потенцирана преку отсликаните претстави на простори и предмети кои го содржат студенилото и оттуѓеноста, и е проткаена во песната како еден пригушен плач во бурата („Престижот на плачот“).Тие интроспекции на разочарувањата, копнежите и мечтаењата стануваат контемплативни слики кои содржат и геометриски форми и структури, архитектонски метафори, како на пример во песната „Геометрија“ каде во еден кубистички манир ги исцртува силуетите на саканиот со триаголници, трапезоиди, кругови и елипси. „Ми недостасуваат димензии / за да го објаснам светот“, како што самата вели во својата песна, навестуваат ново име чие поетска потрага по ново поетско писмо со сигурност ќе донесе поетски творби кои ќе го привлечат вниманието на европската и светската книжевна јавност.(Од образложението на одлуката на СВП по повод доделувањето на наградата „Мостови на Струга”)
Manua Rima
Manua Rime was born in 1975 in Louvain, Belgium. She completed high school and and graduated from the Faculty of Economy and Languages in her hometown. After graduation in 1996, she traveled to Martinique. After the return to Belgium, she worked for several multinational telecommunication companies. Manua Rime has also traveled to Egypt, 1997, Senegal, 1998, Russia, Bulgaria and Romania in 1999 and 2000. In 2005 and 2006 she visited Australia and New Zealand, enriching her soul with new experiences and knowledge of the universal values of life and humanity. Her first book of poetry A Bouquet of Humanity was published in French in 2006.
Angelo V. Suárez
Angelo V. Suárez, an MA Communication student at the University of Santo Tomas, is the author of two books of poetry: The Nymph of MTV and else it was purely girls . He has won prizes from the Carlos Palanca and Maningning Miclat Foundations, and the National Book Award from the Manila Critics Circle and the first Bridges of Struga International Poetry Prize from UNESCO and the Republic of Macedonia for Nymph . He is currently working in close collaboration with visual artists on two new books, s&wich and Dissonant Umbrellas: Notes Toward a Gesamtkunstwerk.
Andrea Cote
Andrea Cote was born in Barrancabermeja, Santander, in 1981. She is a poet and college professor and she has been collaborator of The Internacional Poetry Festival of Medellín. She has published the books: Puerto Calcinado (Poemas, 2003); Blanca Varela y la escritura de la soledad (Ensayo, 2004); Una fotógrafa al desnudo (Biography of Tina Modotti, 2005). In 2002, she received the national young poetry prize of The University Externado de Colombia and in 2005 she received the World Poetry prize of Young Poetry Bridges of Struga, awarded by UNESCO and The Poetry festival of Macedonia. Her book Puerto Calcinado has been partially translated into English, French, Italian, Macedonian, Arabic and Catalanian. As Piedad Bonnett says: Andrea Cote is nowadays one of the most important young voices of our poetry. Her work recreates, in an ambiguous language, full of meaning, a very personal world, of an intimate tendency, full of recurrent feelings that point out the urgency of its phantoms, the need to transform the experience in the word. Moreover, in the words of Juan Manuel Roca Her poems, attentive to the passing by of a rough time, reveal an impulse for not concealing neither tragedy nor oblivion in which it wraps our individual and collective drama. It is hers a reflective poetry that seeks the expresión of a calcinated landscape in fair images, in diverse rythms.
Marijana Geide
Marijana Geide is born in Moscow. She is a poet and translator. She graduated at the faculty of Philosophy. She a winner of several awards for young poets. Her poetry book Time for dust cleaning, published in 2005 is her first book.
Poem:***
Harry Man
Harry Man was born in Buckinghamshire in 1982 and is an award-winning poet and digital editor working in publishing in London. He has worked with some of Britain’s bestselling and most widely-recognised literary authors and estates as a fiction and science fiction desk editor, a programmer and a digital publisher. He holds an MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University. In 2005 he won BBC3's You Heard it Here First. In 2012, as well as being longlisted for the Melita Hume prize, he won third prize in the Cardiff International Poetry Competition and in 2013 he earned second place in PEN International’s Made-Up-Words competition. He has recently been awarded a grant from the Arvon Foundation. Harry has taught Creative Writing workshops in a wide-range of settings including Berrygrove Academy, a primary school in North London, Reading Festival, Totterdown Café Writers' Circle and HarperCollins. He is an entertaining, energetic and informative speaker. His writing concerns the scientific and the personal, skipping between the seeming sense of customer service chatbots and the history of the Earth as told through its online presence, from to love-sick time machine pilots and the brains of nightingales, to intimate stories drawn from the birth of American spaceflight. Harry Man’s poetry has appeared in New Welsh Review, Fuselit, Poems in the Waiting Room, Eyewear Poetry Focus, Poetry Digest, Popshot Magazine, ditch, Elbow Room, And Other Poems, The Morning Star, Poems in Which and Astronaut among other places. He is also a member of Malika Booker’s Poetry Kitchen. He has collaborated with the dancer & choreographer Jennifer Essex on a production for the London College of Fashion and privately on projects with the collage artist Tom Moglu. Harry also narrates children's books for HarperAudio and was selected to be the voice of many of Michael Morpurgo's children's books. Harry Man's first pamphlet of poems, Lift (2013) is published by Tall Lighthouse. Prizes & Awards Second Place - Made Up Words - PEN International 2013 Third Prize Cardiff International Poetry Competition 2012 Longlisted for the Melita Hume 2012 Longlisted for the Bridport Poetry Prize 2006 BBC3 You Heard it Here First 2005 Philip Lawrence Award 1998 & 1999
Nikolina Andova Shopova
Nikolina Andova Shopova was born on 3 feb. 1978 in Skopje. She graduated from the Faculty of Philology (Macedonian and South Slavic literature) at the Ss Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje. She writes poetry and her haiku takes part in the anthology of the new wave of Macedonian haiku. She has published two books of poetry „The entrance is on the other side“(2013) and „Connect the dots“ (2014). Her first book „The entrance is on the other side“ was awarded with the prestigious award „Bridges of Struga“ in 2013, award of UNESCO and the Struga Poetry evenings for best debutante book.
Siim Kera
Siim Kera was born 21 years ago in 1989 in a small South Estonian village called Vastseliina. Nowadays he lives and study in Tartu. His first book was published in 2009, and it’s about love and death and everything that he seems interested about. He has published poetry and short stories in different magazines and newspapers. He also write music reviews for one of the biggest newspapers in Estonia so it’s safe bet to say that he likes writing.
Poem:Indian summer
Hiroshi Taniuchi
Poet, Translator, born on 19 February 1976 in Kyoto, JAPAN Graduated Osaka Prefecture University Major field is French culture Position Member of Japan Universal Poets Association, Kansai Poets Asscociation Editor of English-Japanese International Publication, “Poetic Bridge: AMA-HASHI(天橋）”. Member of Poetry Magazine, “PO” (Osaka, Japan) His first book “Plus one word to the world” is a contribution to International Journal: “Poetic Bridge: AMA-HASHI”
Poem:Catastrophe
François-Xavier Maigre
Was born in 1982, in the seaside town Sharant , in France. He finished law studies and journalism, after which he starts working as a journalist in the daily newspaper “Crux”. Following the example of Roland Nados and the reading of Saint-Paul-Rue, Jill Bodry or Gérard Bosholie, his writing shows aspiration towards the inside, the listening, the contemplation. In his eyes the word should not turn towards itself, but to serve the mystery that overwhelms it, to target towards something greater than itself. Along with his writing he works with music, he has three CDs and he has had many concerts.
Antonija Novaković
Antonija Novakovic was born in 1979 in Zagreb. Apart from the "Bridges" award (2008), she is also the winner of the award for poets-debutants "Goran" (2008), which is awarded within the festival "Goranova Prolet" in Croatia. "It's Easy to Be Worse" is her first book. Previously not published. He lives and works in Zagreb.
Ousmane Sarr (Sarrouss)
Usman Sar (Sarus), born in 1980, is a young French poet and prose writer. He is a student of Contemporary Arts and Philosophy at the University of Paris 7. He is also a former champion of Senegal and a young African Francophone elite player in the Scrabble language game. He was born in Dakar, where he was an honorary Special Adviser to the former mayor of his hometown, before moving to Paris where he continued his education after graduating from high school in 1999. His first book of poetry is entitled The Rhythm of the Waves.
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