Hello
Gentle Reader
The
Franz Kafka Prize is a relatively new literary award; established in
two-thousand and one, where it was first awarded to the recently departed
Philip Roth. Over the past seventeen years, the award has gathered attention
for its unique list of laureates, which blends both world renowned authors and
still yet unknown. Previous winners include: Elfriede Jelinek, Harold Pinter,
Amos Oz, Peter Handke, Arnošt Lustig, and last year’s Margaret Atwood.
The
Franz Kafka Prize has outlined the following as the criteria that the judges
use to evaluate the winning authors:
“The
basic criterion is the quality and exclusivity of the artwork, its humanistic
character and contribution to cultural, national, language and religious
tolerance, its existential, timeless character, its generally human validity
and its ability to hand over a testimony about our times.”
This
year’s winner of the Franz Kafka Prize is the Czech poet and collage artist: Ivan
Wernisch. Wernisch has been publishing poetry since the early sixties. His
poetry is known for being diverse and chameleon like in nature, moving from
playful, to tragic, absurd and dreamlike, to imagistic haikus and lengthy
monologues, to metaphysical meditations. He has been called a postmodern poet
of the first degree, where his poetry is painted with skepticism, and a certain
fascination with both high cultural pursuits, and the populated world of low
culture. Over the past five decades, Ivan Wernisch, has been one of most
critically acclaimed contemporary Czech poets. The sheer diversity of his
themes, forms, and style, has earned Ivan Wernisch this award.
Congratulations
Ivan Wernisch.
Thank-you
For Reading Gentle Reader
Take
Care
And
As Always
Stay
Well Read
M.
Mary
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