The "Aleksandar Leso Ivanović" award for 2021 will be awarded to Đorđe Šćepović for the book of poetry "Messengers".
This was decided by the jury for awarding this award for literary creativity, which consisted of president Milorad Popović and members Dragana Tripković and Aleksandar Radoman.
This year's laureate will be awarded the prize by the mayor of the capital, Aleksandar Kašćelan, on November 21, the birthday of the poet Aleksandar Les Ivanović.
The "Aleksandar Leso Ivanović" award for the best book of poetry was founded by the Literary Municipality of Cetinje in the mid-80s of the last century, it was renewed by the Open Cultural Forum ten years ago, and today it is awarded by the Capital of Cetinje for literary creativity.
Previous laureates of the award include, among others, Vojo Šindolić, Mladen Lompar, Marko Vešović.
In the explanation of the jury, it is stated that Šćepović's book "Messengers" - composed of three poetic cycles "Non-resistance", "Fragment" and "Hurry" - is an authentic poetic experience within the framework of contemporary Montenegrin literature. "The referential framework of this collection greatly exceeds local and national definitions, establishing a relationship with the literary tradition, in the Eliot sense of the term, through a dense network of intertextual traces," the explanation says. On the thematic-motive level, as it is added, Šćepović's poetry brings "a whole spectrum of recognizable topos - identity, existence, origin and meaning of poetry... these are motifs that form a specific form of everyday mythology in Šćepović's book". "In a world without ultimate answers, such as the world of Šćepović's poetry, doubt and irony are the only remaining points of support," says the explanation. The jury also explains that "questioning some of the fundamental values of human existence, ironically playing with signs and the possibilities of its denotation, self-consciously and dialogically postulated, and in the best tradition of resistance poetry, Šćepović's poetic writing is a unique value of contemporary Montenegrin poetic production". Šćepović published books of poetry "Provincije spasa" (2004), "Prayer for Judas" (2004), "A couple of words about fear" (2005), "Apostle from Block A" (2006), "Say three times the metropolis and feed the birds with letters " (2009), "While I was drawing a map of my travels" (2016), "Before publication" (2017), "The Age" (2018), "Messengers" (2020) and the book of short prose "Feast" (2019), which awarded with the "Zaim Azemović" award. Šćepović's poetry has been translated into English, Hungarian and Slovenian.
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