Poets from home and abroad gather at a poetry night at the Zhangqiu Mingshui Ancient City, in Zhangqiu district of Jinan in Shandong province, on March 13, 2024. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

"Regarding the young poet awards, we'd better not make it a general award for good poets or poetry achievements," said the festival's academic director Jiang Tao, a Chinese language professor at Peking University, via a video speech at the news conference.

"Instead, we should use our judging process to discover and reward those who have true breakthroughs in concepts, aesthetics, language, and even in terms of the relationship between poetry and society, as well as those who can truly alter the scenery of and even break new ground in the existing landscape of contemporary poetry," he added.