Poet found dead in France

MARSEILLE- Agence France-Presse

DHA Photo

Kosovo poet Ali Podrimja was found dead Saturday in southern France after being missing for days, according to organisers of a poetry festival he was attending.
 
"The festival has just been notified by the police that the body was found this afternoon in a wooded area four kilometres (2.5 miles) from Lodeve," the Voix de la Mediterranee festival said in a statement.
 
Local prefecture officials said the body was found in the early afternoon near a stream, bearing no signs of violence.
 
The festival organisers' last contact with the poet -- who had delivered a lecture Tuesday afternoon -- was Wednesday morning when a festival official reached him by phone.
 
They struggled to communicate as Podrimja spoke neither French nor English.

The Albanian-language poet was born in 1942 in Gjakova, now a city in western Kosovo by the Albanian border, according to the website of his French publisher Cheyne.
 
He had published over 20 books of poetry and "was considered one of the greatest figures of contemporary Albanian poetry," the festival said.