2024-10-09 20:00:00
The Paduan author prevails with «Paradiso» (Garzanti), a collection created during the pandemic: 40 votes out of 89. Daniela Attanasio received recognition from young people.
It went to Stefano Dal Bianco, for Paradise (Garzanti), the 2024 Strega Poetry Prize. The author of Padua origins, who has long lived in the province of Siena, where he teaches stylistic poetics at the university, received the coveted recognition in the Borgna Studio Theater of the Parco della Musica Auditorium in Rome.
In the grand finale of the prize promoted by the Maria and Goffredo Bellonci and Strega Alberti Benevento Foundation, in collaboration with Bper Banca, the authors of the five finalist books selected by the prize’s scientific committee competed for the votes of the Friends of poetry, one hundred women and men of culture, which had already scored a discreet advantage for Dal Bianco since the morning. Who then won with 40 votes out of 89 cast. Next in the ranking are: Daniela Attanasio with Live in the world (Vallecchi), 17 votes; Giovanna Frene with Heredity and Extinction (Donzelli), 16 votes; Gian Maria Annovi with Discompare (Aragno), 13 votes; Roberto Cescon with Nature (Print 2009), 3 votes.
Paradise is a book born in the ten seasons of lockdown, which demonstrates how poetry can be created “even by walking your dog”. Dal Bianco himself explains: «It is set in the place where I live, a small village on the Sienese hills. On the right you go into the woods on foot, on the left there is the river with trout where you can swim. I wrote it almost entirely in the years of the pandemic, when nature was truly furious, ferocious and omniscient: we had deer on the road at night, in the center of the town.”
Although nature scared him during Covid – adds Dal Bianco on the sidelines of the award ceremony – «I was privileged: I experienced the lockdown with my dog Tito; we went out every day and as we walked I dictated poems into my cell phone: the 108 that give body to the book come from there.”
Dal Bianco, we read in the motivation for the award, outlines «a very human Eden: theater of more or less serene, more or less reassuring visions, which – despite the brevity of the texts – orchestrates by tuning the prevailing hendecasyllable to shorter verses».
To Daniela Attanasio for Live in the world went the Strega Giovani Poesia Prize, awarded with 38 votes out of 102 expressed by a jury of secondary school students. The Youth Award is offered by Bper Banca which also awards an award to the best review sent by the students on the jury: this year it went to Bianca Urso from the Liceo Classico «Borrelli» of Santa Severina (Crotone) for the review of Nature by Roberto Cescon. The winner of the Strega Giovani was announced by the cultural influencer Edoardo Prati. With him on stage – in addition to the finalist poets called to read texts from the competing works – there were two guests who brought contemporary poetry into dialogue with other art forms: Chiara Bersani, author, dancer and performer, and Vasco Brondi, singer-songwriter and writer. Testifying that poetry is a living and participatory art.
Although in Italy meetings of stroke of poetryof improvisation between the underground and the theater festival, the contamination is perceptible in the music and dance. The organizers of the Strega Prize themselves are convinced that «poetry is the most suitable literary genre to dialogue with other forms of expression, which is why we are open to performative poetry and therefore also to stroke of poetryprovided that the latter then has an outlet in the editorial channel”. The Strega Poesia is awarded to texts written and published, «whether they are then performed by the poet or not is irrelevant for the purposes of the prize». But this does not mean inattention, so much so that on the awards ceremony stage, in the Auditorium, Chiara Bersani danced to the words of a text she recited and recorded herself.
«Children today read more than you think, they read more than adults and reading is in an excellent position among their free time activities – underlines Giovanni Solimine, president of the Bellonci Foundation -. According to a survey, referring to young people aged 14-19 (who we involve in the Strega and Strega Poetry awards), it is interesting to see that 62 percent of these young people declare that they read poetry; many also read the lyrics of the songs which can easily be conveyed through messaging systems and social networks”.
The evening, live on RaiPlay, was hosted by the actress Elena Radonicich, who read two texts by Pier Luigi Cappello from the book Like a pencil trail (Bur) — «The noises and barking of a dog enter» and «Indian Ocean» – and in closing «The diameter of the bomb» by the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai, translated from English by Stefano Petrocchi, and «Kindness» by Naomi Shihab Nye, Arab-American poet daughter of a Palestinian refugee, translated by Carolina Traverso.
The Strega Poetry Prize, established in 2023, was won last year by Vivian Lamarque with Old love (Mondadori). For 2024, the choice of the Dozzina was announced on April 5, after a race against time to sift through the 144 books of operas initially selected this year. And on July 11th it defined itself as the Cinquina.
Considering that in Italy there are over 120 poetry publishing houses which in 2023 produced over 300 new collections of poetry, one wonders how the poetry book market is doing: «Compared to last year it is difficult to say, because the poetry market poetry is rather small – replies Stefano Petrocchi, director of the Bellonci Foundation -: even today the data says that readers of poetry in Italy are around 3 percent; much less than the strong readers who make up 15 percent of the population. What can be said with certainty, however, is that there was a clear effect of the first edition of Strega Poesia because Vivian Lamarque’s book awarded last year has achieved a considerable number of sales already in 2023, around 5 thousand copies. It means that a book of poetry can have similar sales to that of a fiction book which has had moderate success.”
October 9, 2024 (modified October 9, 2024 | 9:59 pm)
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