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Luxembourgish author Guy Helminger has been awarded the “Lyrikpreis Meran 2022“ (Poetry Award of Meran). The prize, worth 8000 euros, is one of the most prestigious prizes in the German-speaking territories and is awarded every two years.

In their tribute, the jury wrote:

Laudatio on Guy Helminger for the “Lyrikpreis Meran 2022“

One imagines the poem as a world in which everything is “shadowed [by] expectations” that are always fulfilled, but never in the way the reader assumes. The regularities of this world could be traced back to a combination of nonchalance and rapidity; a nonchalance in attitude and a rapidity with which images are generated from images, creating a movement that passes effortlessly through the whole. Readers are certain of where this comes from, there is always more and more. It is not wealth that is at issue here, but the beautiful abundance out of which gifts are given without the giver apparently having to go through the strain of spending. This world is everything that “is the improbable case”, “like a fallen piece / of sun”. It is Guy Helminger’s world, and it is our world as we read him. And while we stand around like this, we are not waiting for death, but we are waiting for him, the laureate: Guy Helminger. Congratulations for winning the Merano Poetry Prize 2022!

More information about the “Lyrikpreis Meran“ (Poetry Award of Meran) can be found here.