Pesaro, the “Franco Fortini Award” enters the events of the “Passaggi Festival” in Fano

Fano (Pesaro and Urbino), the “Franco Fortini” Award enters the Passaggi Festival program. From this year, in fact, the event will host the final awards ceremony of the prestigious 'International Literary Prize 'Franco Fortini', thanks to the agreement reached between the organization of the festival directed by Giovanni Belfiori and that of the Fortini Prize, chaired by the poet Christian Sinicco.
After the collaboration started in 2021, when the five finalist poets were presented in Fano, this year at Passaggi Festival, scheduled from 20 to 26 June, the final evening will be organised, which will see the presence of the finalists and representatives of the Award, in which the winner will be rewarded.
The evening will be included in the Passaggi diVersi review, curated by Fabrizio Lombardo, poet and juror of the Prize, architect of the positive agreement between the two cultural realities.
“Since 2017 we have been bringing big names in Italian poetry and poetic publishing to Fano –says Lombardo – among which Milo De Angelis, Fabio Pusterla, Vivian Lamarque, Nicola Crocetti, Mariangela Gualtieri, Gianni D'Elia. Being able to host the Fortini awards adds quality to the path undertaken and is a source of great satisfaction for us, because it means taking on an important role in the panorama of poetry, not just Italian".
Founded in 2009, the Fortini Prize was renewed in 2019, after a five-year interruption due to the death of the poet Gianmario Lucini who edited the first editions: “In these three years the Award has established itself as one of the most appreciated in Italy –adds Sinicco– now the framework of Passaggi embellishes it further and allows us to highlight even more, as it deserves, the name of Fortini and his poetics, in particular, for the fundamental role he had in the question between poetry and reality and poetry and politics. Furthermore, after the awards ceremony in Fano scheduled for June, it will take place in Milano another important event, the Lectio magistralis in collaboration with the Foundation for social criticism".
Fortini, who took refuge in Switzerland during the war for racial reasons, took part in the Resistance in Val d'Ossola. In the role of restless conscience of left-wing intellectuals, from the times of the Polytechnic of Vittorini, of which he was editor, up to the Quaderni Piacenza, constituted a point of reference for the younger generations, applying the essayist's intelligence to not only literary but also political and cultural themes.

The Prize is open to poetry collections published in all languages ​​as long as they are accompanied by an Italian translation and is organized by Poiein APS in partnership with Passaggi Cultura. It makes use of the contribution of the Foundation for social criticism and is created in collaboration with Fondazione Palazzo Litta per Arti Onlus - MTM, with the participation of the "Giampaolo Fabris" Department of Communication, Arts and Media of the IULM University and with the patronage of the Department of Philology and criticism of ancient and modern literatures at the University of Siena.
In 2020, more than one hundred books had arrived to honor the memory of Franco Fortini; the Jury, chaired by Christian Sinicco and composed of Maria Borio, Bernardo De Luca, Tommaso Di Dio, Carmen Gallo, Paolo Giovannetti, Luca Lenzini, Fabrizio Lombardo, Francesca Marica, Giuseppe Nibali (secretary), Niccolò Scaffai, Francesco Terzago and Italo Testa , is preparing to tackle the work of selecting the new works which must arrive by 7 March 2022.