The Belarusian PEN Centre and the International Union of Belarusian Writers have announced the books shortlisted for the Natalia Arsenneva Poetry Prize (for publications of 2025).
“This year’s poetry season has demonstrated not only a diversity of voices but also a profound sense of the time in which ‘it is impossible not to exist’, where the word becomes a mode of being, as authors ‘recreate themselves through language’ and search for new forms of presence in the world. In this space, poetry opens up as ‘a vast fragment of the universe’, where the personal and the collective, memory and the experience of the present intertwine into a single text,” the jury noted.
The finalists include the following poetry collections:
- “Netuteishaya Dalechynia” – Ihar Kulikou (Januszkievich, 2025)
- “Chronicle of the Denial of Emptiness” – Illia Kulbitski (Skaryna Press, 2025)
- “Tea Collection. Selected Post-Poetry 2007–2025” – Maks Shchur (SayBeat, 2025)
This year’s jury consists of five members, including such well-known authors as Andrei Khadanovich, Vital Ryzhkou, Nasta Kudasava and Darya Bialkevich.
The Natalia Arsenneva Prize award ceremony will take place on May 29 at 19:00 at the Nowy Teatr in Warsaw.
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