Massimo Maggiari, Coordinator of the Italian program at the College of Charleston, was the winner of an important poetry competition held on December 13, 2001 at the Ariston Theater in Sanremo, the same locale where one of the famous music festivals in the world is staged.
This highly competitive event "La poesia incontra" was designed as "slam poetry," a term borrowed from English which implies a demanding and rigorous process of elimination. Professor Maggiari had to compete against seven other poets from different regions in Italy. The last poetic text read by Dr. Maggiari which made him the winner, "Il peana di Amundsen" ((Amundsen's paean), came from a book of poems published by the Agora publishing house in La Spezia two months ago. (In his paean, a song of joy and praise, Maggiari pays homage to an intrepid Artic explorer who died near the North Pole about 70 years ago).
Last December 22 RAI Uno, the most important TV channel in Italy, transmitted to a television audience of over a million people the previously recorded program. This was the second important national poetic award won by Dr. Maggiari in Italy during the last two years.