4th Fajr Intl. Poetry Festival selects winners

TEHRAN, Feb. 22 (MNA) -- Winners of the 4th Fajr International Poetry Festival took home their awards from a ceremony held at Tehran’s Vahdat Hall on Saturday.

The festival opened in Iran’s southern city of Bushehr on January 23. The top selected participants were judged in the three fields of blank verse, traditional poetry, and children’s and young adult’s poetry.

Veteran poets Maftun Amini, Khosrow Ehteshami, Mohammad-Ali Ajami from Tajikistan and Mohammad al-Amin from Iraq began the ceremony reciting selections of their poetry for the audience.

The awards were later handed to the winners in the presence of Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Mohammad Hosseini, chairman of the Supreme Leader’s office Mohammad Mohammadi Golpaigani, and Deputy Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance for Cultural Affairs Mohsen Parviz.

At the traditional poetry section, Mahmud Habibi Kasbi (Tehran) took first place, Mohammad Moradi (Tehran) and Pantea Safaii (Isfahan) shared second, and third place went to Mohammad-Saeid Mirzaii (Tehran).

The blank verse section handed the first place award to Sina Ali-Mohammadi (Tehran), the second to Mohammad-Hossein Nemati (Tehran), and the third to Omid Mardani (Borujen).

In the children’s and young adult’s poetry section, Kobra Babaii (Tehran) took first place, Hamed Mohaqeq (Tehran) took second, and Gholamreza Baktash (Malayer) took third.

The winners were selected out of 678 participants in the festival that had a total of 12,090 entries.