Turiddu Bella Popular Poetry Trophy

The Turiddu Bella Popular Poetry Trophy is a dialect poetry competition established in Syracuse in 1991, in honor of the Sicilian poet Salvatore Bella (known as Turi) two years after his death.

The competition stands out for giving space to the figure of the storyteller, a role of great prestige and importance in the Sicilian tradition.

The aim of the competition is to recover and safeguard the artistic and cultural heritage that would otherwise disappear; for this reason all the poems participating in the competition are collected in a publication every year, in order to disseminate and safeguard the heritage of poems participating in the competition.

The competition also aims to enhance the Sicilian language and culture, with particular regard to folk and popular traditions and above all to poetry of a popular nature; particular attention is paid to those literary genres that risk total extinction, from the ballad to the story, from the sonnet to the octave, as well as polymetric poetry, giving voice to all those poets who do not find adequate spaces in the panorama of dialect poetry. 

Known and lesser-known dialect poets, resident both in Sicily and outside the island, participate in the competition, poets who versify using the traditional metric structures and who are inspired above all by memories of their native land

In 1997, the daughter of the poet and founder of the competition, created the Centro Studi Turiddu Bella, which promotes study days, conferences and symposiums.