Strega Poetry Award, Stefano Dal Bianco wins second edition

Stefano Dal Bianco, author of “Paradiso” (Garzanti), wins the 2024 Strega Poetry Award with 40 votes out of 89 cast. Next in the ranking are: Daniela Attanasio with “Vivi al mondo” (Vallecchi Florence), 17 votes; Giovanna Frene with “Eredità ed Estinzione” (Donzelli), 16 votes; Gian Maria Annovi with “Discomparse” (Aragno), 13 votes; Roberto Cescon with “Nature” (Print 2009), 3 votes. The proclamation took place this evening in Rome, at the Studio Borgna Theater of the ‘Ennio Morricone’ Auditorium Parco della Musica and live streaming on RaiPlay.

The winning work was chosen by the Friends of Poetry, a voting body made up of one hundred women and men of culture resident in Italy and abroad and which also includes the scientific committee of the prize: Maria Grazia Calandrone, Andrea Cortellessa, Mario Desiati, Elisa Donzelli, Roberto Galaverni, Vivian Lamarque, Valerio Magrelli, Melania G. Mazzucco, Stefano Petrocchi, Laura Pugno, Antonio Riccardi and Gian Mario Villalta. It was the Scientific Committee that selected the five finalists, announced last July 11th at Maxxi L’Aquila.

This is the motivation with which the winning work was admitted to the final: “A poet and his dog set out to explore a rural and wooded world in the heart of Tuscany, in a nature that becomes increasingly wild over time of the pandemic and in which the senses and intelligence of man and animal become complementary. Stefano Dal Bianco’s poetry opens up to a new phase, incorporating elements of autofiction, diary and narration somehow without history, which is based on iteration and circularity, on the repetition of steps and days in a suspended, solitary and happy daily life, full of small and large discoveries, occasionally rippled by fear or disturbed by the sublime language seems to find a different softness here, letting the words become mixed with earth, greenery, leaves, river water. The human and animal body is not lost in nature but continually tests its boundaries, returning from each one these contacts slightly modified, and so to speak increased in a dimension of life”.

Speakers at the final evening were Giovanni Solimine, president of the Maria and Goffredo Bellonci Foundation, Giuseppe D’Avino, president of Strega Alberti Benevento and Lorena De Vita, Sponsorships Office of Bper Banca. Elena Radonicich conducted the ceremony. At the beginning, the actress read two texts by Pier Luigi Cappello from the section “Poems and unpublished prose” of the book “Like a pencil path” (Bur 2024) – “The noises and the barking of a dog enter” and “Ocean Indian” – and in closing “The diameter of the bomb” by the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai, translated from English by Stefano Petrocchi, and “Kindness” by Naomi Shihab Nye, Arab-American poet daughter of a Palestinian refugee, translated by Carolina Crosswise.

The finalist poets – called during the evening to read texts from the competing works – were joined by two guests capable of bringing contemporary poetry into dialogue with other art forms: the author and dancer Chiara Bersani performed in a performance taken from the show Sottobosco, of which she is the creator (music by Lemmo), while the singer-songwriter Vasco Brondi, accompanied on the piano by Angelo Trabace, performed three of his songs alternating with a poetic reading.

Edoardo Prati, cultural influencer and ambassador of the Strega Giovani Poesia Prize, announced the winner of the second edition: Daniela Attanasio, with “Vivi al mondo” (Vallecchi Florence), with 38 votes out of 102 cast. The prize is awarded by a jury of secondary school students.

The Strega Young Poetry Award is a special award offered by Bper Banca which thus renews its closeness to the Strega Award in promoting reading among school communities. In addition to the author award, Bper Banca also recognizes the best review sent by the students who are part of the jury. The award went to Bianca Urso from the Liceo Classico ‘Borrelli’ of Santa Severina (Crotone) for her review of “Natura” by Roberto Cescon (Press 2009).

This year too, the award-winning author received, in addition to a monetary award offered by Strega Alberti Benevento, a copy of the work entitled “L’Infinito Premio Strega”, created and donated by the maestro Emilio Isgrò for the Strega Poetry Award .

The authors of the 2024 Strega Poetry Award were guests in various Italian locations that were particularly active in the area in promoting reading. The dozen presented their works at Maxxi L’Aquila on the occasion of the announcement evening of the finalists. The tour continued with the finalist authors in Civitavecchia, in the Umbra Forest for Festambiente Sud, at the Gabinetto Vieusseux in Florence and at the Pordenonelegge festival. The winner will meet the public tomorrow in Labico (Rome) and in December in Monte Santangelo (Foggia), Cagliari and at the ‘More books, more free’ fair in Rome. The Strega Poetry Prize is promoted by the Maria and Goffredo Bellonci Foundation and Strega Alberti Benevento, in collaboration with BPER Banca, with the support of the Ministry of Culture – Colosseum Archaeological Park, the Gabinetto Vieusseux, media partner Rai, technical sponsors Librerie Feltrinelli and Sygla .