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 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. 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 has also translated 20 books by different authors. Her books have been translated and published in 16 countries.
I loved you like one loves life:
with joy and cheerfulness,
but above all, with suffering,
nostalgia, and sleepless nights.
I looked for your portrait in every
rose petal, in every clear mirror of
water. I looked for your anger in
a winter sea, for your voice in the
deep silences, and for your smile
in a distant and colorful rainbow.
Now I’m left with the crumbled
letters of your name between my
fingers, with a story, ours, which
may or may not be over, with my
spirit cracked because of the long
waits, with my slow steps from
the fear of falling once again.
And I’m still waiting for you with
hundreds of wrinkles scattered on
my skin, my gaze wet with tears,
my soul full of light, as clear as a
dewdrop that will dream about
you up to the end of days, in love.
From the poetry collection: “One day you will tell me”,
Southern Arizona Press, 2023
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.
From the poetry collection: “One day you will tell me”,
Southern Arizona Press, 2023
THE FIRES
It is nothing else, only a bit of nostalgia
in this foggy, cold and anonymous city,
where all the days are the same, where
a pure and a limpid soul is broken.
It is nothing else, just a memory that this
winter brought me from afar—the image
of an old stove and our frozen hands on it.
My dear mother blew on a fire that didn’t
light at all. Sparks were flying in the room
like a thousand shining stars.
Her breath lit the embers and, in the soul,
the fire of love and affection. Now that
she is not here anymore, all the fires are
extinguished. Maybe forever.
Poetry in this post: © Irma Kurti
Published with the permission of Irma Kurti