Visar Zhiti wins Kor衠poetry festival

TIRANA, July 2 – Visar Zhiti has been announced the winner of the 18th edition of the Nights of Kor衠Poetry festival held in the southeastern Albanian city of Kor衠where forty poets from Albania and the Balkan region competed for three nights.
A jury awarded the prize to Zhiti for his “tireless artistic spirit which made him an acclaimed author in his long creative career.”
Poets from Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, but also Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina participated in this year’s edition of the festival held from June 28 to 30 in Kor衬 also known as the city of serenades.
Zhiti, who has recently also served as Culture Minister, is an Albanian writer whose life and works perhaps best mirror the history of his nation. “He was one of the many to have suffered appalling persecution for no apparent reason under communism. But Visar Zhiti survived – physically, intellectually and emotionally, and he is now among the most popular poets of present-day Albania,” researchers say.