On Saturday May 9th, 2024, at the Rome Tennis Club, the winner of the XII 2023 Edition of the Florida Rome Poetry Prize was proclaimed. The award is organized by the Florida International Culture Center, founded in Ardea in 1975 by Sangiuliano and still operating in Aprilia at the Horti Sangiulianei, the talking garden residence of the eponymous poet.
Over the years, the award has made use of prestigious juries in which the most beautiful names of Italian and international literary culture have alternated, from Aurelio Roncaglia to Giorgio Petrocchi, Angelo Maria Ripellino, Riccardo Scrivano, Walter Pedullà, Giuliano Manacorda, Ferruccio Ulivi, Achille Tartaro, Eugenio Ragni, Mario Petrucciani, Walter Mauro, Elio Filippo Accrocca.
The current jury, made up of the founding Maestro of the Prize acting as president and Silvana Cirillo, Claudio Giovanardi, Giuseppe Limone and Norbert von Prellwitz, choosing by majority from a shortlist of six finalists (Paolo Caianiello, Gianandrea Cocco, Davide Rocco Colacrai, Fiorenza Finelli, Vincenzo Guarracino, Raul Precht) proclaimed Vincenzo Guarracino the winner, with the following motivation:
“From the proposed anthology emerges a cultured and refined poet of great stylistic rigor and strong emotional impact, endowed with an accurate cultural and formal versatility, and capable of showing us, through fascinating illuminations, how poetry can be, in the wise use of the word, an exceptional vehicle for exploring the complexity of human life“.
Paolo Caianiello and Gianandrea Cocco ranked second and third respectively.
The prize, consisting in the publication by the publishing house “La Valle del tempo”(The Valley of time) of Naples of the unpublished anthology winner of the competition, inserts, with the work “Oroscopi ed altri versi” (Horoscopes and other verses), into the prestigious roll of honor of Florida Roma a notable frequenter of literature both as a critic and as a practitioner, as well as a highly refined translator from and into various languages and an illustrious art critic. Particularly notable is his contribution as a scholar of the figure of Giacomo Leopardi.
The winner’s book bears the preface by Gilberto Isella and the back cover by Sangiuliano, paratexts in which the two critics converge in placing Vincenzo Guarracino’s language in the area of poetry that can be defined postmodern side sensu.
In thanking the jury, the winner declared himself very honored by a recognition of clear cultural value, guaranteed by a tradition of excellence in all aspects.
The evening was crowned by a good audience.
On this occasion, presenting the various qualities of Central Florida not found elsewhere, Guglielmo Fornaro illustrated the genesis of the international poetry series “I propaoli”, the hand-painted books on the covers of past Florida editions, of which some of the specimens that enchanted everyone who saw them.
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