Di Cicco Poetry Prize

Di Cicco Poetry Prize

Librissimi is pleased to host he second bi-annual Di Cicco Poetry Prize.

The winners for 2024 will be announced at a special reception on Saturday May 4^th at 7pm, Columbus Centre – 901 Lawrence Avenue Westto host the 2024 Di Cicco Poetry Prize.

For information and RSVP, click HERE

The Di Cicco Poetry Prize was founded in 2021 by George Elliott Clarke, Joe Pivato and Giovanna Riccio in remembrance of poet Pier Giorgio Di Cicco.

The Prize is a bi-annual award presented to poets of Italian descent by a three-judge jury.  The jury is tasked to select first, second and third prizes for the books they deem best show sustained high achievement and which are illustrative of translating Dante’s heritage into Canadian poetry.

Pier Giorgio Di Cicco was the second Poet Laureate of Toronto.  He was also the creator and editor of the seminal 1978 volume Roman Candles: An Anthology of Poems by Seventeen Italo-Canadian Poets. As such, he was the first anthologist of Italian-Canadian poetry and one of the first to think publicly about Italian-Canadian literature and to make this community of writers visible–both to themselves and to Canada.

The inaugural winner of the Prize in 2021 was Carmine Starnino, the highly accomplished man-of-letters and present editor of The Walrus.  Starnino well represented the aim to highlight the relevance and import of poetry to truth, beauty and humanity.

The 2024 short-listed poetry collections as selected by judges Francesco Loriggio, Carmine Starnino and Giovanna Riccio, are:

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