Skopje, 27 August 2023 (MIA) — Struga Poetry Evenings festival's traditional reading dedicated to the poetry of its annual Golden Wreath award winner was held Saturday in the St. Sophia church in Ohrid, with this year's laureate Vlada Uroshevikj reading his poems to an audience including President Stevo Pendarovski, according to the SPE in a press release.

Literary scholar Lidija Kapushevska Drakulevska spoke about Uroshevikj, describing him as "one of the most authentic poetic voices under the Macedonian poetic sky and beyond."

His poetry, Kapushevska Drakulevska said, is cosmopolitan and oriented toward the world's cultural and civilizational heritage.

Uroshevikj (b. 1934, Skopje) is the third Macedonian poet to have won the Golden Wreath, the SPE's highest award given to international authors for an outstanding poetic oeuvre. The other two Macedonian winners were Blazhe Koneski and Mateja Matevski.

He is also one of the 12 founders of the poetry festival in 1961, and the only three-time winner of its Miladinov Brothers award for a Macedonian-language poetry book of the year. mr/