Press conference

In Tetova, the Direction of the IPF “Ditët e Naimit” held its press conference

FINNISH AUTHOR TUA FORSSTRÖM LAUREATE OF THE NAIM FRASHËRI PRIZE

The 16th International Poetry Festival “Ditët e Naimit” will be held from October 18th to 21st in Tetova (Macedonia) and in Prishtina (Kosova). This great poetic and cultural manifestation coincides with the 100th anniversary of the Albanian Declaration of Independence.

In the beginning there was Naim Frashëri and then Independence and consequently the Festival. To complete this trinomial meaningfully, the Direction of the Festival has decided to declare the polyhedral Albanian figure, the writer and patriot Adem Demaçi (the chairman of the Kosova Writers’ Association and the Sakharov Prize Winner) as an Honorary Member of the Festival. This title is conferred to Adem Demaçi in the first night of the programme, which will take place, according to the Festival Director Shaip Emërllahu, in the Cultura Centre “Naim Frashëri” in Tetova.

The second part of the programme will unfold in Kosova, namely in Prishtina and Prizren. Up to now, 30 poets from around the world and the whole Albanian space have confirmed their participation in this edition, besides actors, journalists and friends of poetry, the Festival, and Naim Frashëri. The Festival is supported by the Ministry of Culture of Macedonia and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Kosova.

The Jury consisting of Dr. Ymer Çiraku (Albania), Dr. Nysret Krasniqi (Kosova) and Niels Hav (Denmark) have assigned the great „Naim Frashëri“ award of the 16th edition of the International Poetry Festival “Ditët e Naimit” to the well-known Finnish poet Tua Forsström. According to the regulation, she was also declared by the Direction an Honorary Member of the Festival. Up to now, the title of an Honorary Member of the Festival has been conferred to known writers and intellectuals, such as Ismail Kadare (Albania), Desmond Egan (Ireland), Thomas Tidholm (Sweden), Manlio Argueta (El Salvador), Abdellatif Laâbi (Morocco), Peter Poulsen (Denmark), Lionel Ray (France), Ewa Lipska (Poland), Craig Czury (USA) etc.

Later in the press conference, the chairman of the Jury of the Festival, Prof. Dr. Ymer Çiraku, read the motivation for the awarding of this prize, underlining, among others, that the poetic creativity of the poet Tua Forsström displays an intensive collage of figures and meanings of philosophical and metaphysical nature, conveying the reader a mixture of intertwined sensations between the humour of naive astonishment and imbalances of existential anxieties of the human being of our times. A part of this collage projected with obvious aesthetic strategy are also quotes and fragments from known philosophical works created across the centuries by renowned philosophers, which not only explain or help to unveil enigmas, but also create more of them and thus fixate the reader in relations with the texts of the poems.

As it was also remarked by the critics, a simplicity of speech and transparent melancholic tones, which are noted at the first approach in reading, are nothing but a kind of poetic trick, as in the core they don’t have anything to do with the nature of this poetry, where the collage technique carries references between phenomena furthest apart, to unite them and press them to a very tightened density, so that they keep strong energy as far as the form and the intensity of appearance are concerned. In some cases, everything vanishes like chaos, to convey the image of the beginning of the world, without the order and rhythm of things, where people and birds and trees, arts and primitive crafts, caves and metropolis, seas and icebergs, rich and poor stay together and stray through space, but all those seem to be created to communicate and notify poetically religious visions and existential philosophical concepts of communication and of living together, in order to feel inescapably together in the face of planetary enigmas.

In her many books, which continue today to be published with success, the poet Forsström appears with a variety of conceptual and technical models of speech, thus evidencing a vital, always regenerating creative portrait. Her creative movements go into all directions up to the kind of poetic rhythm, which is somewhat heavy and almost annihilating the classical models, whereas somewhere it returns to them to create texts with an almost musical rhythm.

Thus awarding te prize to this talented contemporary poet is a merited appreciation which, symbolically, signifies a link of nice poetic and spiritual communication between the Naimian days (with the perfume of violets) and the Nordic polar nights with their beautiful and phantasmagorical illumination!

tua_forsstrom

Tua Forsström (born in Porvoo on April 2nd, 1947) is a known Finnish writer, who writes in Swedish. Her first publication dates from 1972 and was enriched by successive other publications, with the main focus on existential concerns of modern society with all of its rhythms, values and challenges of existential anxieties they contain.

She is prized as one of the most preeminent Swedish-language poets and has been translated into English, German, French, Italian, Finnish, Danish, Dutch etc. She secured great appreciation among the readers and critics with her book Snow Leopard (1987), whereas she received the prestigious Prize of the Nordic Literature Council with her poetic volume After Spending a Night Among Horses.

A.Arsllani

Tua Forsstrom (FINLANDE)