The awards record highlighted the formal solidity and symbolic scope of the award -winning piece.
Miami, United States. – Within the celebrations for the Centenary of Hialeah, the jury of the poetry contest convened by the city’s public libraries awarded the Poetry Prize in Spanish to “Memory of the Swamp”, presented under the pseudonym Hidalgo and identified as the work of Grethel Delgado Álvarez.
The results were announced during the gathering “the caiman before the mirror”, which in this edition celebrated its third anniversary as a cultural space of reference in the city, according to the press release sent to Cubanet.
The literary court was made up of the writer and journalist Aragon grapethe poet and narrator Legna Rodríguez Iglesias and the literary translator Eduardo Aparicio. In the deliberation process he participated in voice, but without vote, Osvaldo Gallardo González, coordinator of the contest.
The awards record highlighted the formal solidity and symbolic scope of the award -winning piece. On “Pantano Memory”, the press release sets out: “The work, made up of 13 sections, was highlighted by its lyrical coherence, its sensory wealth and its ability to transform the local in universal experience, humanizing the inhabitants of the city and evoking memory and dreams as an essential part of the identity of Hialeah.”
The jury stressed that this balance between sensitivity and civic look was decisive for the final selection.
In addition to the main award, an honorable mention was conferred to the poem “Hialeah, one hundred years under the sun”, presented with the pseudonym “The swallow who sings” and identified as the work of Gilda Pallares Barrios. The jury highlighted his “tone of gratitude and tribute to the city”, the musicality of the verses and “the way in which he recognizes Hialeah as a land of reception of immigrant communities.”
In the English category, the jury declared the Desert Prize. According to the official statement, the English language participation “was very small” and “the works presented did not reach the necessary poetic force in relation to the subject proposed in the call.”
The organizers and the jury dedicated a specific section to warn about practices that, in their opinion, compromise the integrity of poetic creation. “The jurors emphasized the importance of preserving the authenticity and truth of poetic creation, and expressed their serious concern about the use of artificial intelligence tools in the writing of some texts, which were disqualified,” says the press release.
The gathering “The Cayman before the mirror” hosted the revelation of the results as part of a broader cultural programming for the 100 years of Hialeah. The contest – announced in April under the title “Poetry over time: a tribute to the centenary of Hialeah” – opened participation at all ages, nationalities and places of residence, with unpublished texts in Spanish or English and independent awards for each language. According to the organizers, the winning works would receive 500 dollars, a diploma and an original work of art.
The call established that the poems should revolve around the city of Hialeah and reflect its cultural, social and historical essence. Compositions were admitted in free verse or in any estrophic form with a maximum of 300 verses.
