Cilento Poetry Prize is an Italian literary prize founded in 2017 by the poet, writer and literary critic Menotti Lerro and awarded annually, in the month of August, in Salento Cilento—"The Poetry Village".

Menotti Augusto Serse Lerro is an Italian poet, writer, playwright, librettist and academic. His work explores matters of social alienation and existentialism, the physicality and vulnerability of the body, the interpretation of memories, the meaning of objects and the philosophical importance of human identity. In 2015 he published Donna Giovanna, l'ingannatrice di Salerno, an innovative feminine and bisexual version of the mythical figure of Don Juan, El Burlador de Sevilla, while in 2018 he wrote Il Dottor Faust, an original version of the character of Faust. In addition he is the author of a New Manifesto of Arts and the founder of the Empathic movement (Empathism) that arose in the South of Italy at the beginning of 2020.