On World Poetry Day, 21st March at the press conference held in the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts was announced that Charles Simic, a poet from the United States of America is the winner of the “Golden Wreath” award 2017 of Struga Poetry Evenings.
In the decision of the Boarding Committee for presenting the award and the Managing Board is stated that it is about an original poetic voice that initially, through a surrealistic experience, gradually evolved in a distinctive observer of the modern, with strong moral and philosophical questions, extremely clear, serious but fun at the same time . His poetry is seen as a passionate and lucid testimony of modern time.
He was born in 1938, in Belgrade in former Yugoslavia. He is one of the most significant contemporary American and world poets and essayists. He moves in USA in 1953 with his family. He began writing poetry while in high school; his poetry beginnings were influenced by the American poets: Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens… His first collection of poems What the Grass Says (1967) was well received by the critics which notes that the author is more oriented towards the rural and towards Europe, instead of to his new homeland.
The most significant poetry collections: What the Grass Says (1967); Somewhere among Us a Stone is Taking Notes (1969); Dismantling the Silence (1971); White (1972); Return to a Place Lit by a Glass of Milk (1974); Biography and a Lament (1976); Charon's Cosmology (1977); Brooms: Selected Poems (1978); School for Dark Thoughts (1978); Classic Ballroom Dances (1980); Austerities (1982); Weather Forecast for Utopia and Vicinity (1983); Selected Poems, 1963-1983 (1985); Unending Blues (1986); Nine Poems (1989); The World Doesn't End (1989); The Book of Gods and Devils (1990); Hotel Insomnia, Harcourt (1992); A Wedding in Hell: Poems (1994); Frightening Toys (1995); Walking the Black Cat: Poems (1996); Jackstraws: Poems (1999); Selected Early Poems (2000); Night Picnic (2001); The Voice at 3:00 A.M.: Selected Late and New Poems (2003); Aunt Lettuce, I Want to Peek under Your Skirt (2005); My Noiseless Entourage (2005); 60 Poems (2008); That Little Something (2008); Master of Disguises (2010); The Lunatic (2015)
He is also an essayist, translator, editor, and professor emeritus of creative writing and literature at the University of New Hampshire, where taught for over 30 years.
Charles Simic is the recipient of numerous literary awards. He has received the Edgar Allan Poe Award, the PEN Translation Prize and awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the Griffin International Poetry Prize, the Robert Frost medal as well as The Zbigniew Herbert International Literary Award. He was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2000. On August 2, 2007, the same day he was appointed Poet Laureate, Simic received the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets for outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry.
Intriguing, provocative, shocking, meditative, full of insights of ironic humor, his poetry will be immediately recognized as a particular step in contemporary American poetry and highly valued. The critical observations of the work of Charles Simic have always valued its originality.
His poetry work is deprived of unnecessary ornaments, unnecessary extensiveness in the expression, but in the dictation of a poetic intonation that strives towards the ultimate sound adjustment.
His poetry features a tendency for a minimalistic, lapidary, almost gnomic expression which is reduced by the syntax. That use of the poetic image, the metaphor, as he determines it, brings the impressive concision of Simic’s poem.
This year’s laureate of the “Golden Wreath” award Charles Simic is awarded for his extensive oeuvre in which the mastery of poetic image in the processing of ideas about war, history, individualism is being developed. By assigning this prestigious recognition, Struga Poetry Evenings add another living classic of contemporary poetry in the list of winners.
In his addressing on the occasion of winning the “Golden Wreath” award, Charles Simic stated:
’I was delighted to hear that I’m to be awarded The Golden Wreath Award this August at Struga Poetry Evenings. A number of past winners were my friends and I know how deeply honored they were to receive this award and so am I today. The list of your past recipients is so distinguished that I don’t know of another poetry prize anywhere in the world that can equal it. I have fond memories of Struga Poetry Evenings in 1972 and my visit to Skopje afterwards and on another occasion in 1982. I look forward to meeting old friends and making new ones. Thank you all.’
The award will be presented on the international poetic readings “Bridges”, as a part of the Struga Poetry Evenings Festival that will be held from 23rd – 28th of August 2017.
