Global Indian International School (GIIS) SMART Campus IB Year 1 student Riya Mehta won the second prize in the Write and Burn National Poetry Competition on May 25.
Organised by the Singapore Poetry Festival, the event saw students across Singapore showcasing their poetic talents.
The participants had to submit a video of an original poem in the qualifying round. From those submissions, 16 finalists were selected to perform live at the Central Public Library on the theme “Illness un:bound”.
They presented a rich array of poems, offering diverse perspectives that captivated both the judges and the audience.
The judges, who included Singapore Literature Prize winner Desmond Kon, Shilpa Thapliyal and Ow Yeong Wai Kit, had a tough time deciding the three winners, as they had to evaluate originality, language mastery and performance.
Riya’s powerful lyrical piece titled Flowers Die. Don’t They? stood out for its exploration of the hidden illness of discontentment and its impact on well-being.
Riya, 16, has written more than 100 poems in English, Hindi and Gujarati, which she plans to publish soon.
She believes poetry is a cathartic form of expression that comes to life through the amalgamation of experience and language.
