SINGAPORE – Housewife Tamilselvi Rajarajan, 52, was heartbroken when her good friend, a migrant employee in Singapore, struggled with being caught in a dormitory in the course of the pandemic.
Her anguish grew to become the purpose of departure for Window, which gained first prize within the Tamil quick story class of the fifteenth Golden Level Awards, a inventive writing competitors for poetry and quick tales in Singapore’s 4 official languages.
A complete of 39 winners had been introduced on the awards ceremony held at The Arts Home on Saturday (Dec 11). Ms Goh Swee Chen, chairman of the Nationwide Arts Council, gave out the prizes.
This 12 months’s competitors attracted near 2,000 entries, the best quantity since its inception in 1993 by the NAC. The organising committee reported a rise in submissions throughout all classes. Solely writers who, on the time of utility, have but to publish a solo work within the style they’re competing in are allowed to submit entries for the awards.
Mrs Rajarajan, a first-time winner, says: “I all the time had an curiosity in writing however by no means actually pursued it. However as my kids grew up, I had extra time to put in writing and used it as a inventive outlet.”
She says she would in all probability use her prize cash to publish her writings. First-prize winners get $7,000 in money, along with a certificates and trophy. There are money prizes for the opposite winners.
Ms Divya Govindarajan’s quick story, Handwriting, nabbed first prize within the English Brief Story class. Written from a third-person perspective, the narrative revolves across the issues individuals inherit and the way they assist to form their identities.
The 35 year-old provide chain skilled says Handwriting is her first story. By means of the pandemic, she believes that individuals have come to determine a sixth stage of grief along with denial, anger, bargaining, despair and acceptance: that means.
The story’s protagonistprocesses her father’s loss of life by traversing completely different worlds, portrayed within the language of goals. Alongside the best way, she discovers that means and the way it has modified her.
Author Clara Chow, who was on the judging panel, lauded the story as having a “swish economic system that completed greater than some longer items”.
Ms Govindarajan says: “This story got here to me virtually like a inventive start: my water broke and I need to write.”
She hopes to make use of the prize cash to attend inventive writing workshops and begin a writing follow.
The primary prize within the English Poetry class went to Mr Jerome Lim’s poetic sequence – Sizzling Wheel Summer time, I am Nonetheless Fifteen Doing On-line Profession Quizzes, Breakfast At Bone Seaside, Anthropogenic and Plan For Silly Sizzling Days.
The 27 year-old literature trainer at a secondary college can be the managing editor of poetry.sg, a web-based archive of Singapore poetry and criticism.
Mr Lim says that his sequence of poems was “born out of a rising must affirm one’s capability for compassion”.
In his work, empathy is interrupted by violence, warfare and local weather change, which he feels displays the up to date challenges of at present’s world.
His poems for the Golden Level Award are his first works since collaborating within the Melbourne Writers’ Competition in 2019.
He plans to make use of his prize cash to purchase presents to encourage the scholars in his Secondary 4 class. He additionally hopes to contribute to literary non-profit Sing Lit Station’s fund-raiser to assist the native literary scene and put money into his personal writing follow by way of poetry workshops and courses.
First Prize Winners
Brief story
English: Divya Govindarajan, for Handwriting
Chinese language: Lee Tong Gee, for Gone Lacking
Malay: Ratna Damayanti Mohamed Taha, for Oar In Hand, Boat In Water
Tamil: Tamilselvi Rajarajan, for Window
Poetry
English: Jerome Lim, for Sizzling Wheel Summer time and different poems
Chinese language: Lin Yijun, for Spawn and different poems
Malay: R. Azmann A. Rahman, for The Raving Of Tales and different poems
Tamil: Venkatalakshmi Gopalakrishnan (Banu Suresh), for Pleasure Of Illness And Grief Of Restoration and different poems
