American, Italian poets awarded Janus Pannonius Prize

Budapest (MTI) – The American Charles Bernstein and the Italian Giuseppe Conte were presented the Janus Pannonius Grand Prize for Poetry at a ceremony in Pecs, southwest Hungary, on Saturday.

Bernstein’s poetry was praised for being “unexpected, radical, provocative, complex, dexterous, and contemporary” in a laudation at the ceremony.

Conte’s poetry “exceeds the limit of contemporary minimalism by introducing the magical, the solar and the cosmic forces of primeval civilizations in Italian poetry”, according to the website of the prize.

The prize was established by Geza Szocs, the president of the Hungarian PEN Club, in 2012. It comes with a 50,000 euro purse.

Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters