Poet of the Month

January: Rebecca Lowe (Wales).
February: Jim Gronvold (USA). 
March: Carolyn Mary Kleefeld (USA).
April: Tozan Alkan (Turkey).
May: Byron Beynon (Wales).
June: Michelle Chung (USA). 
July: Jim Gwyn (USA).
August: Jonathan Taylor (England).
September: Beata Poźniak (USA).
October: Maria Taylor (England).
November: Stanley H. Barkan (USA).
December: John Dotson (USA).

January: Maria Mastrioti (Greece).

February: Gayl Teller (USA).
March: Mike Jenkins (Wales).
April: Cassian Maria Spiridon (Romania).
May: Simon Fletcher (England)
June: Sultan Catto (USA)
July: Vojislav Deric (Australia)
August: K. S. Moore (Ireland)
September: Kristine Doll (USA)
October: Tammy Nuzzo-Morgan (USA)
November: Christopher Norris (Wales)
December: Maria Mazziotti Gillan (USA)

2023: Poets featured as Poet of the Month 

January: Samuel Ezra (Wales)
February: Tôpher Mills (Wales)
March: Rob Cullen (Wales)
April: Mandira Ghosh (India)
May: John Greening (England)
June: Rosy Wood-Bevan (Wales)
July: David Hughes (Wales)

 

Irma Kurti (c) Photo 2024 Irma Kurti

 

IRMA KURTI is an Albanian poet, writer, lyricist, journalist, and translator and has been writing since she was a child. She is a naturalized Italian and lives in Bergamo, Italy. All her books are dedicated to the memory of her beloved parents, Hasan Kurti and Sherife Mezini, who have supported and encouraged every step of her literary path.

Kurti has won numerous literary prizes and awards in Albania, Italy, Switzerland, USA, Philippines, Lebanon and China. She was awarded the Universum Donna International Prize IX Edition 2013 for Literature and received a lifetime nomination as an Ambassador of Peace by the University of Peace, Italian Switzerland. In 2020, she became the honorary president of WikiPoesia, the encyclopedia of poetry.

In 2022, she was nominated as the Albanian ambassador to the International Academic Award of Contemporary Literature Seneca of the Academy of Philosophical Arts and Sciences, Bari.

That same year, she was awarded the title of Mother Foundress and Lady of the Order of Dante Alighieri by the Republic of Poets.

She received the Grazia Deledda medal and diploma of merit from the National Committee of WikiPoesia on the 150th anniversary of the birth of the great Italian poet.

 In 2023 she was awarded a Career Award from the Universum Academy Switzerland. She also won the prestigious 2023 Naji Naaman's literary prize for complete work.

Irma Kurti is a member of the jury for several literary competitions in Italy. She is also a translator for the Ithaca Foundation in Spain.

Irma Kurti has published 29 books in Albanian, 25 in Italian, 15 in English, and two in French. She has also translated 20 books by different authors, and all of her own books into Italian and English.

Irma Kurti is one of the most translated and published Albanian poets. Her books have been translated and published in 16 countries.

DESIRES

I wish I could have wept off your tears,
the ones you swallowed in silence, Mom.
I wish I could have given you more love
and calmness as you looked behind the
glass window with your big eyes like a
beautiful dream. And the roads extended
before you, without end and beginning,
as in the twilight, you tried to collect the
last pieces of your desires that vanished
just like some white clouds.

I thought diseases could do nothing to
you, that you were immune to evil, to
pains, sufferings, or anxieties, that you
were strong and invincible like a rock,
that the waves wet but didn’t destroy.

And now, I cry your tears of despair at
a time that a second chance can never
be given to me again.

(c) 2024 Irma Kurti


WE HAD THE SEA CLOSE BY

We had the sea close by; wide and infinite
in its anger, it tried hard to enter our words.
We had the sea close by; it didn't take much
to hold the waves in our hands. Only a step
would be enough, and the particles of sand
between our fingers would have penetrated.

But I had you close to my soul. The noises,
the waves vanished at sunset, a thousand
particles of sand faded, lost somewhere. It
was your voice that remained; like a cradle
it rocked me with the tenderness of a wave.

(c) 2024 Irma Kurti


IN ANOTHER LIFE

In another life, we would both live in a villa
with an immense beautiful garden, the sea
would greet us every morning. In our soul,
the children’s voices would plant the spring.

In another life, we would know each other
in our early childhoods, and so would have
grown up together; I would live with the
birth of your every single wrinkle or gray

hair, loving and admiring them in silence.

But life is this: without children or a villa
that faces the sea; there’re only you and
me who knew each other in the twilight
of life and this tiny flat where your voice
is heard, the best music and symphony.

(c) 2024 Irma Kurti


THE JACKET OF SADNESS

Under the faint neon light, shadows of people
pass by. It’s raining, and the street is sleepy and
deserted, while the wind refuses to bring me
a message from you now.

I keep waiting for you with an imperceptible
anguish, just as spring awaits the return of a
migratory bird from a long journey.

Time drags on. The air clings to me with a sense
of emptiness; the roads seem abandoned, and
my soul is a mixture of rain and tears.

My heart keeps calling you, but you do not
answer. I stand still. Life is also this instant:
waiting for you restively, on my shoulders,
a jacket of sadness.

(c) 2024 Irma Kurti


THINK ABOUT ME

Think about me on your long walks
on the seashore, when the breeze is
caressing your gray hair and the sea’s
salty smell rests on your skin like a tattoo.

Think about me in the long hours of
solitude under the sky embroidered
with thousands of stars, when the
cigarette trembles on your lips, the
smoke covers your face; the world
without me in it is no longer
a paradise. In those instants, when
you touch the shells that leave a
sand grain between your fingers,
when the sun sets below your look:
sweet, melancholic, lost somewhere.

The power of your thought will take
me to you to make all sadness vanish.
I will be there, by your side, to wrap
myself in your embrace as in a soft,
delicate, immense white cloud.

(c) 2024 Irma Kurti


EARLY MORNING

Early morning.
My thoughts
wander,
disorientated,
without
knowing yet
what direction
to take.

The sun road
that radiates
colors, light
full of magic
or the alley
of a gray cloud?

Early morning.
Only the echo
of my thoughts
is heard as they
crash with one
another and
rotate as in a
game, trying
to choose
between sun
and shade.

(c) 2024 Irma Kurti


A LONG WINTER AWAITS US

A long winter awaits the two of us
within those four walls of a home
that no longer knows us, inside this
life that doesn’t belong to us: I am
here, and you are so far.

A long winter awaits the two of us.
I don’t know if the roads that now
divide us will be full of ice or snow,
if the kilometers between us will
stretch like arms that can’t embrace.

A long winter awaits the two of us.
And I collect the last leaf of autumn
and, just like a letter, I send it to you.

(c)  2024 Irma Kurti


A FLOWER PETAL

Sometimes you’re so fragile, like a flower petal
that the wind whirls on the sidewalk, without
force, colorless, which assumes the nuances of
your sadness and sorrow.

Thus, you leave yourself in the hands of wind
throwing you wherever it wants, for you can’t
tell it “yes” or “no.”

A flower petal in the air is lifted by the storm,
just later, inert and hopeless, it lies on the road.

(c) 2024 Irma Kurti