Skopje, 19 March 2026 (MIA) — Dutch poet and translator Anneke Brassinga has been named the recipient of the 2026 Struga Poetry Evenings festival's Golden Wreath Award.

The decision was announced Thursday at the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Brassinga is the first Dutch poet to receive the SPE's top award in its 65-year history.

Minister of Culture and Tourism Zoran Ljutkov praised Brassinga's work as "moving the world away from the prosaic and closer to the essential." 

"Today we are not announcing a laureate. We are announcing a testimony. We are announcing proof that poetry is the ultimate act of creative courage," Ljutkov said. He also said she was a "translator of worlds." 

"Brassinga’s poetry is that space where language ends and something else begins," he said. 

"She writes with a rare patience," Ljutkov said. "The patience of someone who knows that the right word is not the first one to come — that you have to wait."

In a message to the festival, Brassinga expressed deep gratitude for the recognition.

"I am deeply moved, even more so since I am the first Dutch poet to be awarded this prize," Brassinga wrote. "It gives me the feeling as if all Dutch poetry, both past and present, has been honored with this wreath."

Nikola Kukunesh, acting director of the festival, described Brassinga as a "magician of language" known for her linguistic inventiveness and philosophical depth. 

Kukunesh noted that her work explores the boundaries between sound and meaning, often blending the real with the surreal.

Anneke Brassinga (b. 1948, Schaarsbergen) began her career as a literary translator before debuting as a poet in 1985. She has translated works by Sylvia Plath, George Orwell, Ingeborg Bachmann, Hart Crane, Samuel Beckett, Marcel Proust, Jules Verne and other writers into Dutch.

Her own poetry collections, including "Landgoed" (1989) and "Verschiet" (2001), have earned numerous awards, such as the Ida Gerhardt Poëzieprijs. Her work has been translated into several languages, including English, French, Russian, German, Spanish and Hungarian.

The Struga Poetry Evenings festival, established in 1961, has previously awarded the Golden Wreath to Pablo Neruda, Fazıl Hüsnü Dağlarca, Miroslav Krleža, Blazhe Koneski, Desanka Maksimović, Joseph Brodsky, Makoto Ōoka and W. S. Merwin, among others. mr/