Struga, 26 August 2022 (MIA) — Following the 63rd Struga Poetry Evenings festival's award ceremony and international "Bridges" reading held in Struga on Sunday evening, participants will read their poems at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje on Monday.

According to MIA's Struga correspondent, SPE organizers, as is tradition, awarded this year's awards at Struga's Bridge of Poetry.

"If the poem is the beating heart of life, Struga, in the heart of millennial Europe, is the beating heart of poetry. The Struga Poetry Evenings are the dawns of the heart and spirit," said this year's Golden Wreath winner, French poet and playwright Jean-Pierre Siméon, after receiving his award for an entire poetic oeuvre.

German poet Katrin Pitz was presented with the UNESCO-sponsored 2024 Struga Bridges award for a debut poetry collection for her "Auch solche tage waren immer schon da: Gedichte."

Miladinov Brothers award winner Katica Kjulavkova received the prize for best Macedonian poetry book published in the previous year for her book "The Sky is My Home."

The first-ever Young Struga award for an unpublished poetry collection was given to Filipa Sara Popova. The award is sponsored by the EU Delegation.

Andrej Madikj Lazarevski received the SPE's Enhalon award for best poem by a young author read at the festival.

The SPE began with Siméon planting a tree sapling at the Poetry Park and read his poems ahead of the official opening of the festival Thursday evening with a reading of Konstantin Miladinov's "Longing for the South" in Braille and lighting the festival fire at Miladinov Brothers Cultural Center. mr/