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Struga Poetry Evenings - History |
As from 1963, when many poets from all Yugoslav
republics also joined the festival, the "Miladinov
Brothers" award was established for the best
poetry book published in the Republic of Macedonia
between two Struga poetry festivals. By 1966,
the SPE turned into an international poetry event
and, consequently, an international poetry award
called "The Golden Wreath" was established,
given to a world renowned living poet for his
poetic oeuvre or life achievement in the field
of poetry. The first recipient of this award was
W. H. Auden. Two years ago the SPE and UNESCO
established a close cooperation and jointly promoted
a new award called "The Bridges of Struga"
for the best first poetry book by young authors
from all over the world.
Despite the tremendous difficulties and harsh
realities that the festival has had to live
with - the fall of Yugoslavia, the war in Bosnia,
the Kosovo crisis, the political and ethnic
clashes in Macedonia, the terrorist crisis after
September 11 th attacks, a number of olitical
and economic embargos imposed on the region,
the Festival managed to go on and is currently
the oldest festival in the world, held in continuation
for 45 years. It has successfully flourished
and is now one of the most important poetry
events in the modern world. And that is its
a tribute to world poetry and the poets.
The Festival has offices in Struga and in Skopje
(a director of office, an executive and a technical
secretary) and is organized by a Festival Board,
which consists of knowledgeable professionals
in the field of poetry (poets, critics, translators,
and professors in comparative literature and
culture).
This year the SPE honored the great Palestinian
poet Mahmoud Darwish with "The Golden Wreath",
and the national poetry, which will have its
own evening, is modern Turkish Caribbean poetry.
Among other events, this year's SPE also features
a Translation Workshop, which this year will
be held for the fourth consecutive year. It
usually starts a week before the festival and
is focused on the work of a prominent contemporary
Macedonian poet or on the current year's winner
of the national "Miladinov Brothers"
poetry award. In that case the results of the
workshop are presented at the evening dedicated
to the winner of the award. The workshop is
designed to bring together poets and translators
to work in a rather relaxing atmosphere and
a beautiful environment of poets-translators.
The workshop is primarily also attended by young
translators, mostly language and literature
graduate students - some of them poets themselves,
who present their work at a reading during the
Festival.
The most attractive poetry events during the
festival are "The Meridians" reading
at the opening evening of the festival, and
"The Bridges of Struga" reading at
the closing of the festival. These are spectacular
events that attract the citizens of Struga to
come out in huge numbers and greet the poets
from all over the world with their famous hospitality.
Other featuring events of the Festival are
the two multimedia events (poetry, music and
video) called "Nights without Punctuation".
The festival is thus open for new, rather experimental
forms of poetic presentations, which also include
other arts.
Every year, the Festival also organizes a round-tabel
discission on different and attractive topics.
The theme of this year's round-table is "Poetry
and Nomadism" and we hope it will attract
the attention of many literary experts from
all over the world.
During the past 45 years of its existence the
festival has hosted about 4.000 poets, translators,
essayists and literary critics from about 95
countries of the world.
So far the poetry anthologies of the following
countries have been published and been given
a special evening for their presentation:
