The Paul Beckett Poetry Prize, organised annually by the Valparaíso Foundation, has in its 23rd edition been awarded to the book titled “El contorno de las horas” (The contour of the hours), the opening of the sealed bid revealing the author to be Juan Frau.
The award comes with a cash prize of 4,000 euros and the publication of the book in the Beatrice poetry collection.
Juan Frau is a senior lecturer in the Theory of Literature at the University of Seville. Included among the prestigious poets of the 21st century, he has already received for his first publication of poems first prize in the University of Seville Literary Competition. As a researcher he has published books like “The Literary Theory of León Felipe” and “Reality and Fictions of Literary Text”, and the editing and translating of “A Defence of Rhyme” by Samuel Daniel.
The Paul Beckett Prize for Poetry has received 233 collections of poems from very different parts of Spain and from another 13 countries. An important number of authors which increases with every edition as the importance of this poetry competition on the literary scene also grows.
The jury was made up of Jorge de Arco, Raquel Lanseros, Jesús Mateos, María del Carmen Mestre and Carlos Murciano, under the presidency of María del Carmen García Tejera in her capacity as academic at the Real Jerezana de San Dionisio, all of them highly regarded names in the literary world.
The Valparaíso Foundation is a non-profit institution established in 1990 by Paul and Beatrice Beckett. Its main aims are the promotion of artistic creation and research in the field of fine arts, literature and music.
Among its diverse activities in the field is a residence for artists, writers and researchers at the facilities owned by the foundation in Mojácar, which has brought many of the best artists of the moment to the locality.
