“What is a poet? An unhappy person who hides deep anguish in her heart but whose lips are so formed that when sighs and cries pass through them, they sound like beautiful music. – Soren Kierkegaard
April holds an important place in the life of all writers, especially poets who like to challenge themselves with a variety of prompts and themes to weave beautiful poems. April is globally celebrated as National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) in writing communities where poets write a poem every day throughout the month. Originally launched in 2003 by American poet Maureen Thorson as a personal writing goal for her blog, it quickly gained popularity among poets and writers from various corners of the world. Over the years, many literary communities/websites/forums and pages have adopted various ways to lead NaPoWriMo for poets with a plethora of interesting and thought-provoking creative writing prompts and other ideas.
Elite Book Awards – a popular digital literary platform promoting talent in art and literature held its first poetry competition NaPoWriMo this year in a unique way with its media partner and agency India’s most trusted digital media company, Digital Golgappa. In an attempt to let poets explore their creativity and celebrate poetry, the EBA team gave them the freedom to choose not just 30 guests for 30 days, but a list of 70 guests they could experiment with and choose from in order to write their pieces within 30 days. the expected period of 1 month. In tribute to the legendary writer and poet Virginia Woolf, the Virginia Woolf Memorial Poetry Prize 2022 has been established by the EBA to honor the best poet of the month.
Kolkata-based writer and poet Lagnajita Paul has become the proud recipient of this year’s Virginia Woolf Memorial Poetry Prize 2022 and has been honored as “Top Poet of the Month”. Poets Niyoshi Parekh from Mumbai and Debarati Sen from Kolkata were declared first and second runners-up respectively in the competition, the results of which were announced on 8and May. The internationally held event brought together 110 able-bodied participants in total, with a majority of participants from India and a handful of participants from Africa, the United States of America, Pakistan and the Arab Emirates. United.
The top 10 winners of the contest leaderboard were as follows:
Rank 1 – Lagnajita Paul
Rank 2 – Niyoshi Parekh
Rank 3 – Debarati Sen
Rank 4 – Dr. Romila Chitturi and Ali Ashhar
Rank 5 – Rumman Amatul and Nikita Motwani
Rank 6 – Indrani Chowdhury and Sangeeta Kumari
Rank 7 – Indira Guha Patra and Shishira Srinivasa
Rank 8 – Dr. Aswin Shaji and Piyali Mitra
Rank 9 – Samata Dey Bose and Abinaya K
Rank 10 – Fahad Khalique and Ajola Ganesan
Additionally, 6 honorable mention titles were awarded to Elizabeth Akinniyi, Sumana Acherjee Mukherjee, Ayana Mukherjee, Yashi Lath, Sunayana Kayastha and Angarika.
The team will soon publish an anthology of this year’s NaPoWriMo Top 50 Poems in association with publishing partner Digital Golgappa which will be available online on Amazon and a few other channels.
