(Note: The Fernando Rielo Prize, worth 7,000 Euros, is given annually and the deadline for submissions of words is usually in October of each year. Poets of any nationality are eligible. Read the previous call for entries here. You might want to participate next year.)
Twelve finalists in the 30th Fernando Rielo World Prize for Mystical Poetry
The winner of the Rielo Prize for Mystical Poetry will be announced December 15 at a ceremony held in the Spanish Embassy to the Holy See in Rome, presided over by Fr. Federico Lombardi, Director of the Vatican Press Office. The winner will receive 7,000 Euros along with publication of the work and a commemorative medal.
The Jury, which underlines the high quality of the works submitted, selected 12 finalists from among 208 participants from 32 nations, and now faces the difficult task of choosing the winner of the 30th Rielo Prize for Mystical Poetry.
In alphabetical order the finalists and their works are:
This year’s Honorary Committee is composed of Valentín García Yebra, Gregorio Salvador Caja, Antonio Mingote, Luis María Anson and Bernard Sesé; the Presidents of the Universidad Pontificia Comillas and the Universidad Politécnica of Madrid; the President of the Association of Spanish Writers and Artists, Juan Van-Halen; Ramón Pernas, writer and member of the Pontifical Academy Auriense-Mindoniense of St. Rosendo; and the poet Andrés Sánchez Robayna.
Preliminary Descriptions of the 12 Finalist Works for the 30th Fernando Rielo Prize for Mystical Poetry
Diario con hambre de vuelo [Diary hungry for flight] by Francisco Aroca Gómez (Murcia, Spain), with a sensitive and surprising sense of metaphor, takes us on a journey through the soul where one can appreciate the purifying experience of God, unfathomable in the raw northern wind, in the winter snow or in hurricane-like fire; but also the gratifying experience of prayer, in the poet’s inner child, in the mountain aroma of spring, in the liturgy of a white Sunday of alleluias. It is poetry of seeking and of encounter in hope and humility to continue “flying overhead in the soul” day by day.
The Venezuelan poet Christian Díaz Yepes, with La noche y el deseo [Night and desire], shows us an existential poetry with a sculpted and at times surrealist voice that attempts to offer what is real and authentic—yet cannot reach it. This metaphysical effort appears to enclose the real in the exclusive region of the poem where the meaning of life resides. Everything is born within the skin where “love is more than loving oneself,” “torrent of oneself in open water.” For this reason, he contemplates in the silence of each syllable the yearnings of each human being resounding within himself; but in the end, everything is “deep night” whose horizon and transparent reality is “to go more and more to less.”
The book Go with God by Phillip Donnell of New Zealand, presents with spontaneous simplicity the perplexities and questions of the soul in its relation with the divine. The freshness he impresses on his verse borders on the sapiential, as for example when he recognizes how grace is manifested in the midst of ups and downs, interspersing a healthy humor. He reflects human fragility in need of Christ as the only means of perfection. Far from the formal canons of “typical” poetry, this work nevertheless reveals traces of originality in the use of rhyme and of colloquial language.
Dorel Visan’s Salmos [Psalms] is a prayer-songbook, translated from Rumanian to Spanish, consisting of supplications and desires for God threaded together with a simple, direct style: “Let me have you in my arms / as my child.” Its poetic strength is rooted in the passionate impulse of a faith that confesses its humility: “In comparison with me / the grain of sand is a Himalayan peak / and my tear, a shoreless sea, / an incessant rain.” The nakedness that runs through the verses also becomes nakedness of spirit: “Give me a portion of your heavenly dress / to cover the nakedness of my soul.”
The Columbian Adela Guerrero Collazos offers us the book El amor me habita [Love dwells in me]. These are brief poems, made of instants, impressions, memories in which the author weaves the absence-presence of God, always gently suggestive and with great delicacy. This work has the virtue of a great coherency of language, in whose images are noted the touch of encounter and of searching: “You penetrate where I do not find you / while I seek you / breeze of psalms / approaches / my door.” She sings her union with the Beloved with accompaniment of the instruments of exuberant nature.
Huésped de tu resurrección [Guest of your resurrection] is a book by Francisco José López Sáez. With images that are original, direct and expressive, he shows us God the Creator who forges man with fire and shows him His face in the secrets of the night, in “crucified suffering.” In addition to the haikus vested with snow, music and Light, he frequently uses definition, imprinting upon it a visionary image: “Childhood is the insomnia of memory,” “Our home is the motherland of an inverted time,” “God is thirsty water, / man is dust in our fingers,” “The Spirit is the inebriation of life.”
The Costa Rican poet Kathy Madriz Flores gives us her book En el umbral de tu Palabra [On the threshhold of your word] beginning with the prayerful taste of conversion: “I knock at your door, Father, / because I have been a poet of clay like my pain.” The Word of God is the leitmotiv of her search: “I seek you in every bone and in each face wrapped in your Word.” But it is a search undertaken in trust: “I have fasted from all things and You know it.” The images taste of the postmodern linguistic turn of phrase: “Come / to the kingdom of my word.” “Today my poem is drenched with hopes / in paper clay.”
Cánticos para la luz de otro siglo [Canticles for the light of another century] is the book of the Cuban poet Roberto Méndez Martínez. These are long poems of a narrative type in which the author elevates to poetry his meditation on Gospel motifs (prayer in the garden, the call of the angel, transfiguration, resurrection), theological ideas (Trinity, Virgin, shroud), mystical or religious motifs (Little Flowers of St. Francis, Mantegna’s Lamentation over the Dead Christ, Poor Clares Monastery, St. John of the Cross) and philosophical or cultural ideas (Plotinus, Dante). Here we have a good poet with admirable linguistic handling and extraordinary mastery of image.
The Ecuadorian Juan Carlos Ribadeneira delights us with his book Barro alado… [Winged clay…] With singular boldness and transparency, the poet recreates a great variety of themes intertwined with the divine Word, which is a “red-hot coal that penetrates the center of things.” Thus he contemplates the smallest creatures: “lunar insect” with its “diminutive stole.” In his memories of childhood, he strives to see with divine vision and not to fall into a laziness of the soul that “makes us orphans from God.” Therefore, seeing the “world’s skin” that is a shroud “inviting to death”, the poet exclaims: “nothing is more certain than remaining in your vertigo.”
Esa llama de amor [That flame of love] is the book given us by Manuel Rodríguez Ballester (Seville, Spain), delicate and full of religious sentiment, fresh poetry, with dynamic rhythm wherein everything appeals to “that flame of love” that beats like a torch and unquenchable fire of the human spirit following the trail of its creator. The poet’s attitude is contemplative, with the framework of the solar cycle, showing preference for evening, where our author pays out his meditations characterized by a docile acceptance of the divine presence that gradually chisels him with its grace: “I dreamed that I was clay / and You were my Potter.”
Lucrecio Serrano Pedroche, in his work De rodillas, Señor, ante el sagrario o Evangelio de Juan [Kneeling, Lord, before the tabernacle, or Gospel of John], chisels smoothly and delicately flowing images in an attitude of permanent prayerful dialogue from a genuinely Johannine spirituality. In beautiful and harmonious lines, he expresses his love for Christ: “What madness of love, that of knowing / that also your condemnation / Lord, will be what saves me.” It is colorful poetry, optimistic, hopeful: “I cannot love, Lord, as You love, / but let me, Lord, love with You.” With the dialogue is also the agapé: “Let me not lack the wine of your table.”
Al amor de tu lumbre [To the love of your splendor] is the title of the book by Alfredo Villaverde Gil (Madrid, Spain), a poet who carefully attends to form without being facile, achieving constancy of poetic accent and lyric tone. In the hospital he feels death on his back and seeks God as a child who wants the protection of his father. In ten décimas he expresses his “fire in love” that only “finds peace” in God. Lovely sonnets, lyric poems, free-verse and haiku follow, expressing his sense of seeking and encounter, of absence and presence. True poetry of light and joy.
Press office:
English- Taniya George taniya.id@gmail.com +39 3807872613
Fundación Fernando Rielo www.rielo.com
More information here.
Twelve finalists in the 30th Fernando Rielo World Prize for Mystical Poetry
The winner of the Rielo Prize for Mystical Poetry will be announced December 15 at a ceremony held in the Spanish Embassy to the Holy See in Rome, presided over by Fr. Federico Lombardi, Director of the Vatican Press Office. The winner will receive 7,000 Euros along with publication of the work and a commemorative medal.
The Jury, which underlines the high quality of the works submitted, selected 12 finalists from among 208 participants from 32 nations, and now faces the difficult task of choosing the winner of the 30th Rielo Prize for Mystical Poetry.
In alphabetical order the finalists and their works are:
- Aroca Gómez, Francisco (Murcia, Spain): Diario con hambre de vuelo [Diary hungry for flight]
- Díaz Yepes, Cristian (Venezuela): La noche y el deseo [Night and desire]
- Donel, Phillip (Tauranga, New Zealand): Go with God
- Dorel Visan (Cluj-Napoca, Rumanía): Salmos (Spanish translation) [Psalms]
- Guerrero Collazos, Adela (Bogotá, Colombia): El amor me habita [Love inhabits me]
- López Sáez, Francisco José (Ciudad Real, Spain): Huésped de tu Resurrección. Nombres para un exilio [Guest of your Resurrection. Names for an exile]
- Madriz Flores, Kathy (Cartago, Costa Rica): En el umbral de tu Palabra [On the threshhold of your Word]
- Méndez Martínez, Roberto (Camagüey, Cuba): Cánticos para la luz de otro siglo [Canticles for the Light of another century]
- Ribadeneira Terán, Juan Carlos (Quito, Ecuador): Barro alado… [Winged clay]
- Rodríguez Ballester, Manuel (Sevilla, Spain): Esa llama de amor [That flame of love]
- Serrano Pedroche, Lucrecio (Albacete, Spain): De rodillas, Señor, ante el Sagrario, o Evangelio de Juan [Kneeling, Lord, before the Tabernacle, or Gospel of John]
- Villaverde Gil, Alfredo (Madrid, Spain): Al amor de tu lumbre [To the love of your fire]
This year’s Honorary Committee is composed of Valentín García Yebra, Gregorio Salvador Caja, Antonio Mingote, Luis María Anson and Bernard Sesé; the Presidents of the Universidad Pontificia Comillas and the Universidad Politécnica of Madrid; the President of the Association of Spanish Writers and Artists, Juan Van-Halen; Ramón Pernas, writer and member of the Pontifical Academy Auriense-Mindoniense of St. Rosendo; and the poet Andrés Sánchez Robayna.
Preliminary Descriptions of the 12 Finalist Works for the 30th Fernando Rielo Prize for Mystical Poetry
Diario con hambre de vuelo [Diary hungry for flight] by Francisco Aroca Gómez (Murcia, Spain), with a sensitive and surprising sense of metaphor, takes us on a journey through the soul where one can appreciate the purifying experience of God, unfathomable in the raw northern wind, in the winter snow or in hurricane-like fire; but also the gratifying experience of prayer, in the poet’s inner child, in the mountain aroma of spring, in the liturgy of a white Sunday of alleluias. It is poetry of seeking and of encounter in hope and humility to continue “flying overhead in the soul” day by day.
The Venezuelan poet Christian Díaz Yepes, with La noche y el deseo [Night and desire], shows us an existential poetry with a sculpted and at times surrealist voice that attempts to offer what is real and authentic—yet cannot reach it. This metaphysical effort appears to enclose the real in the exclusive region of the poem where the meaning of life resides. Everything is born within the skin where “love is more than loving oneself,” “torrent of oneself in open water.” For this reason, he contemplates in the silence of each syllable the yearnings of each human being resounding within himself; but in the end, everything is “deep night” whose horizon and transparent reality is “to go more and more to less.”
The book Go with God by Phillip Donnell of New Zealand, presents with spontaneous simplicity the perplexities and questions of the soul in its relation with the divine. The freshness he impresses on his verse borders on the sapiential, as for example when he recognizes how grace is manifested in the midst of ups and downs, interspersing a healthy humor. He reflects human fragility in need of Christ as the only means of perfection. Far from the formal canons of “typical” poetry, this work nevertheless reveals traces of originality in the use of rhyme and of colloquial language.
Dorel Visan’s Salmos [Psalms] is a prayer-songbook, translated from Rumanian to Spanish, consisting of supplications and desires for God threaded together with a simple, direct style: “Let me have you in my arms / as my child.” Its poetic strength is rooted in the passionate impulse of a faith that confesses its humility: “In comparison with me / the grain of sand is a Himalayan peak / and my tear, a shoreless sea, / an incessant rain.” The nakedness that runs through the verses also becomes nakedness of spirit: “Give me a portion of your heavenly dress / to cover the nakedness of my soul.”
The Columbian Adela Guerrero Collazos offers us the book El amor me habita [Love dwells in me]. These are brief poems, made of instants, impressions, memories in which the author weaves the absence-presence of God, always gently suggestive and with great delicacy. This work has the virtue of a great coherency of language, in whose images are noted the touch of encounter and of searching: “You penetrate where I do not find you / while I seek you / breeze of psalms / approaches / my door.” She sings her union with the Beloved with accompaniment of the instruments of exuberant nature.
Huésped de tu resurrección [Guest of your resurrection] is a book by Francisco José López Sáez. With images that are original, direct and expressive, he shows us God the Creator who forges man with fire and shows him His face in the secrets of the night, in “crucified suffering.” In addition to the haikus vested with snow, music and Light, he frequently uses definition, imprinting upon it a visionary image: “Childhood is the insomnia of memory,” “Our home is the motherland of an inverted time,” “God is thirsty water, / man is dust in our fingers,” “The Spirit is the inebriation of life.”
The Costa Rican poet Kathy Madriz Flores gives us her book En el umbral de tu Palabra [On the threshhold of your word] beginning with the prayerful taste of conversion: “I knock at your door, Father, / because I have been a poet of clay like my pain.” The Word of God is the leitmotiv of her search: “I seek you in every bone and in each face wrapped in your Word.” But it is a search undertaken in trust: “I have fasted from all things and You know it.” The images taste of the postmodern linguistic turn of phrase: “Come / to the kingdom of my word.” “Today my poem is drenched with hopes / in paper clay.”
Cánticos para la luz de otro siglo [Canticles for the light of another century] is the book of the Cuban poet Roberto Méndez Martínez. These are long poems of a narrative type in which the author elevates to poetry his meditation on Gospel motifs (prayer in the garden, the call of the angel, transfiguration, resurrection), theological ideas (Trinity, Virgin, shroud), mystical or religious motifs (Little Flowers of St. Francis, Mantegna’s Lamentation over the Dead Christ, Poor Clares Monastery, St. John of the Cross) and philosophical or cultural ideas (Plotinus, Dante). Here we have a good poet with admirable linguistic handling and extraordinary mastery of image.
The Ecuadorian Juan Carlos Ribadeneira delights us with his book Barro alado… [Winged clay…] With singular boldness and transparency, the poet recreates a great variety of themes intertwined with the divine Word, which is a “red-hot coal that penetrates the center of things.” Thus he contemplates the smallest creatures: “lunar insect” with its “diminutive stole.” In his memories of childhood, he strives to see with divine vision and not to fall into a laziness of the soul that “makes us orphans from God.” Therefore, seeing the “world’s skin” that is a shroud “inviting to death”, the poet exclaims: “nothing is more certain than remaining in your vertigo.”
Esa llama de amor [That flame of love] is the book given us by Manuel Rodríguez Ballester (Seville, Spain), delicate and full of religious sentiment, fresh poetry, with dynamic rhythm wherein everything appeals to “that flame of love” that beats like a torch and unquenchable fire of the human spirit following the trail of its creator. The poet’s attitude is contemplative, with the framework of the solar cycle, showing preference for evening, where our author pays out his meditations characterized by a docile acceptance of the divine presence that gradually chisels him with its grace: “I dreamed that I was clay / and You were my Potter.”
Lucrecio Serrano Pedroche, in his work De rodillas, Señor, ante el sagrario o Evangelio de Juan [Kneeling, Lord, before the tabernacle, or Gospel of John], chisels smoothly and delicately flowing images in an attitude of permanent prayerful dialogue from a genuinely Johannine spirituality. In beautiful and harmonious lines, he expresses his love for Christ: “What madness of love, that of knowing / that also your condemnation / Lord, will be what saves me.” It is colorful poetry, optimistic, hopeful: “I cannot love, Lord, as You love, / but let me, Lord, love with You.” With the dialogue is also the agapé: “Let me not lack the wine of your table.”
Al amor de tu lumbre [To the love of your splendor] is the title of the book by Alfredo Villaverde Gil (Madrid, Spain), a poet who carefully attends to form without being facile, achieving constancy of poetic accent and lyric tone. In the hospital he feels death on his back and seeks God as a child who wants the protection of his father. In ten décimas he expresses his “fire in love” that only “finds peace” in God. Lovely sonnets, lyric poems, free-verse and haiku follow, expressing his sense of seeking and encounter, of absence and presence. True poetry of light and joy.
Press office:
English- Taniya George taniya.id@gmail.com +39 3807872613
Fundación Fernando Rielo www.rielo.com
More information here.
