The Umberto Saba Prize to the poet Patrizia Valduga

It will once again be an opportunity to celebrate, through the Saba Prize, World Poetry Day and the arrival of spring: the awards ceremony is scheduled, in fact, for Saturday 21 March, at 5pm, in Trieste, in the spaces of the Lets Letteratura Museum (piazza Hortis 4). The event will then be divided into an animated dialogue around the themes of the award-winning collection. The members of the Saba Poetry Prize jury will speak with the winner Patrizia Valduga: the poets Claudio Grisancich (president), Franca Mancinelli, Antonio Riccardi and Gian Mario Villalta, coordinator of the panel, and the literary critic Roberto Galaverni.

The motivations of the Saba Prize jury underline that the awarding of the 6th edition wanted to recognize «the originality of the setting of the work Lacrimae rerum, characterized by a single, continuous discourse, which proceeds in fragments and runs through the entire book. The collection is the execration of the current evils of the world, all the more painful because they are amplified by communication and its frequent stolidity, up to the most tense tones of invective. But the voice that shares that pain is not just a comment or judgement: it is that of a tormented life that fights its own limits, highlighting how lacerating the indifference to which we all risk becoming accustomed can be. An indifference disguised as sentimentalism by the rhetoric of information, thus offending a sensitivity not dulled by chatter. Not the last reason for the Jury’s choice: in this book we have found an unmistakable voice, which over time has coherently formed a work where, book after book, the value of the memory of poetry, the anthropological heritage of humanity, is confirmed”.

The Vice President of the Autonomous Region of Friuli Venezia Giulia Mario Anzil, Regional Councilor for Culture and Sport, explains that «the Umberto Saba Award confirms itself as an important event for Friuli Venezia Giulia and for Trieste, a city that in its history has been able to be a crossroads of cultures and great literary voices. Rewarding Patrizia Valduga means recognizing one of the most authoritative voices in contemporary Italian poetry and strongly reiterating how poetry continues to be an instrument of knowledge, sensitivity and dialogue with our time. In a border region like ours, destined to be a laboratory of border culture, the Saba Prize contributes to enhancing the great poetic tradition of the territory and to consolidating itself as a place of meeting and cultural growth for the community, with particular attention to the new generations”.

And on behalf of the Municipality of Trieste, Deputy Mayor Serena Tonel thanks the Pordenonelegge.it Foundation and the autonomous Region of Friuli Venezia Giulia for having renewed their commitment in making the Umberto Saba Poetry Prize possible, together with the Municipality of Trieste. «It is – says Tonel – a well-established event, now in its 6th edition, capable of transcending the boundaries of the city and the region. Poetry is an effective language for offering citizens, and especially young people, tools to reflect on themselves and the world around us, in a way that is not obvious but on the contrary touches the most delicate and profound chords of the human soul. The Umberto Saba Poetry Prize offers everyone an opportunity to discover contemporary poets and rediscover the poets of the past, in an exceptional place: the city of Trieste, a crossroads of cultures, which has held and continues to hold a privileged role in the national and international cultural panorama, positioning itself as a point of reference for the history of Italian literature as well as in other languages. With this Award we want to create a bridge between the present, the future and the tradition of the great writers and poets in various capacities linked to Trieste”.

Patrizia Valduga (1953) collected her verses in Medicamenta (1989), One Hundred Quartines (1997), First anthology (Donna di Dolores and Corsia degli incurabili, 1999), Quartine. Seconda centuria (2001), Requiem (2002), Libro delle laudi (2012), Erotic poems (One hundred quatrains, Manfred and Lezione d’amore, 2018), Belluno (2019), Lacrimae Rerum (2025). He also published Italians, learn Italian! (2010 and 2016), Proustian Breviary (2011), For looks and for words (2018). He translated John Donne, Mallarmé, Valéry, Molière, Shakespeare, Porta and Pound. In 1988 he founded the monthly «Poesia» which he directed for a year.