Оn Europe Day, May 9, the International Poetry Festival “Orpheus” – Plovdiv traditionally awards its awards in 4 categories at a closing ceremony in the Small Early Christian Basilica, announced in advance on the multilingual website of the festival www.orpheus-plovdiv.eu.
The reading and award ceremony begins at 6 p.m. and you can watch it live at www.plovdiv-online.com, the website of cultural Plovdiv.
The Orpheus Grand Prize for outstanding contribution to poetry was awarded last night to the Bulgarian poet Elin Rahnev.
The remaining awards, which are traditional, will be handed out tonight.
The Orpheus Award for overall performance goes to the Estonian poet and honorary professor of the University of Tartu Juri Talvet and the Georgian writer, poet and former Minister of Culture of Georgia Guram Odisharia.
The “Orpheus Lyre” award for a poem from the festival went to the Croatian poets Ivan Herceg and Alen Galović (the curious thing is that Alen’s poems were written while he was a soldier in the Croatian Army during the war with Serbia under the Milošević regime, on his knees and in secret from his comrades so that they wouldn’t laugh at him, as Galović shared).
The Eurydice Award for a love poem from the festival goes to the Czech poet Simona Ratzkova and her Slovak sister Zuzana Kuglerova.
The “In the Footsteps of Orpheus” award for an essay or poem on an Orphic theme goes to the Plovdiv poet Teodora Sukareva and the Bosnian Emina Selimovic.
The eighth edition of the Orpheus Plovdiv 2025 International Festival is a creative product of the Plovdiv LIK Foundation, part of the cultural calendar of the Municipality of Plovdiv, and was opened by the Deputy Mayor for Culture Plamen Panov on May 8 in the crowded hall of the Small Early Christian Basilica of Plovdiv.
Both ceremonies are broadcast live at www.plovdiv-online.com, and all participants with biographies, texts in their native language and translated into Bulgarian and English can be read freely on the multilingual website of the festival www.orpheus-plovdiv.com
Plovdiv LIK Foundation thanks the Municipality of Plovdiv, all the guest participants who travel to Plovdiv at their own expense, the dozens of loyal poetry lovers, among them students from the humanitarian high school “St. St. Cyril and Methodius”, EG “Plovdiv”, students and teachers from Plovdiv University, the translators Lyudmila Mindova, Kadriye Dzhesur, Dimana Ivanova, Gergana Zlatkova, Tilyo Tilev, Elka Dimitrova, Anton Baev.
The Orpheus Poetry Society has already rounded up the number of 100 participants in the eight editions of the festival so far.
We continue without change!
