Cilento Poetry Prize

Cilento International Poetry Prize (Italian: Premio Internazionale Cilento Poesia) is an Italian literary prize founded in 2017 by the poet, writer and literary critic Menotti Lerro and awarded annually, in the month of August, in Salento Cilento—"The Poetry Village".

Criteria for nomination
The prize is awarded to "a poet who, during the preceding year, has published a collection of poems already considered relevant to be part of the history of literature, or the same prize is conferred to a distinguished poet for the importance of his/her career". It is considered as the flagship of the Empathic Movement (Empathism).

Prizes (some cases equal-first) have been awarded as follows

 * 2017 – Davide Rondoni
 * 2018 – Milo de Angelis
 * 2019 – Franco Loi and Roberto Carifi (special winter edition at Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera)
 * 2019 – Giampiero Neri and Vivian Lamarque
 * 2020 – Elio Pecora
 * 2021 – Dacia Maraini
 * 2022 – Valerio Magrelli and Tiziano Rossi
 * 2023 – Maurizio Cucchi and Najwan Darwish

Cilento Prizes for criticism have been awarded as follows

 * 2018 – Francesco D'Episcopo
 * 2019 – Umberto Curi
 * 2020 – Remo Bodei (posthumous)

Cilento Prizes for art have been awarded as follows

 * 2023 – Omar Galliani and Antonello Pelliccia

Cilento Prizes for music have been awarded as follows

 * 2023 – Franco Mussida and Bernardo Lanzetti

Cilento Prizes for narrative have been awarded as follows

 * 2023 – Diego De Silva and Maria Rita Parsi

Institutional sponsorship
The Cilento Poetry Prize is officially supported by: Ministero della Cultura, Regione Campania, Provincia di Salerno, Comune di Salerno, Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio Salerno e Avellino, Parco Nazionale del Cilento, Vallo di Diano e Alburni, Università degli Studi di Salerno - DISPS.
 * In 2022, on a project written by Menotti Lerro, the Prize has been financed by the Italian Ministry of Culture for €140,500 to let it become International.