Skopje, 27 March 2025 (MIA) — The Slovak poet Ivan Štrpka will receive the 2025 Struga Poetry Evenings festival's Golden Wreath award for a poet's complete oeuvre and the Polish poet Mateusz Szymczyk will receive this year's Bridges of Struga prize for his first poetry collection, festival organizers told a press conference Thursday.

Speaking about Štrpka's poetry, Macedonian literary critic Katica Kjulavkova said it was "unpretentious, subtle," and "full of detail — each poem a small box of moving images; a segmented cinematic episode."

"Those who are well versed in Antar Mouna meditation will sense the atmosphere of relaxation and the subject's non-attachment to just one image, one feeling," Kjulavkova said.

"If he wants to juxtapose two different views and scenes from reality, Štrpka writes two poems," she said.

In his letter in response to organizers notifying him that he is this year's Golden Wreath winner — which was read at the press conference — Štrpka said that "poetry transcends its words and grows into its own meaning."

"Let's read each other, let's write each other, let's explore each other more deeply!" he wrote, among other things.

Ivan Štrpka (b. 1944, Hlohovec) is a prolific poet, lyric writer and translator from Spanish and Portuguese into Slovak. He made his poetry debut with "The Brief Childhood of Lancers (1969). He studied Slovak and Spanish at Comenius University in Bratislava. He has worked for Slovak Television and as editor of several Slovak literary magazines.

His poetry collections include "Tristan Talks Trash" (1971), "Now and Other Islands" (1981), "Before Metamorphosis" (1982), "News from the Apple" (1985), "Everything Is in a Shell" (1989) and "Beautiful Naked World" (1990).

Szymczyk's debut poetry collection "Sources Needed" (2023) is the winner of the UNESCO-sponsored Bridges of Struga award.

Macedonian language teacher and SPE's management board chair Elizabet Baranuai Kukuneshoska spoke about Szymczyk's poetry.

She said his book included "repeated words-comments, enclosed in brackets to increase the reader's attention, as a kind of signal to reflect or stop reading."

"There are no titles so the reader is given space to add and name according to what resonates most strongly in the individual reading," Baranuai Kukuneshoska said.

"Szymczyk makes sure the reading is an intense experience, both in terms of the form he gives his poems and the topics he touches on, including the observed drudgery of everyday life, the fatigue of the body, the undiscussed transience, the struggle with the tension of crowded thoughts," the SPE management board chair said.

In "Sources Needed," Baranuai Kukuneshoska said, "we encounter rhythmic phrases, haiku, funny rhymes, verbal jumps, repetitions that sometimes bring to mind a wail … strongly indicating the need to disclose the sources."

Mateusz Szymczyk (b. 1989 in Wroclaw) studied ethnology and cultural anthropology. He is also the winner of the 2022 Jacek Bierezin Polish Poetry Competition.

The Struga Poetry Evenings takes place in Struga every August, gathering dozens of poets from the country and abroad for a series of poetry readings and talks.

Each year, the festival awards its Golden Wreath award to a poet for their entire poetic oeuvre as well as several other prizes. mr/