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-- PHOTO: COURTESY OF HO EILEEN
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BESIDES a few visits to Malaysia, the first time Raffles Junior College student Ho Eileen had ever been out of Singapore was on a two-week trip to India last November.
She and her schoolmates visited a camp in Tamil Nadu for refugees from the Sri Lankan civil war, as part of the school's service learning programme.
Said the 17-year-old, who won the third LifeStyle- Elephant & Coral contest for her poem s.l.r camp, gummidipoondi: 'Previously, my parents didn't want to pay for trips overseas just for a holiday, but they thought that a service trip would be good, a way to learn about other people's lives.'
At the camp, the students spoke to children and adult refugees and helped to build a classroom for the children.
She says: 'We could not do much construction, so we formed a human chain and passed bricks.'
A member of the Creative Arts Programme for secondary school and junior college students, where she is mentored by poet Cyril Wong, she had tried writing some poems about her experiences in India after her return. 'But nothing really took shape. I had nothing to structure my poems around,' she says.
Then last December, she came across the LifeStyle-Elephant & Coral contest in this newspaper and was struck by the theme The Spice Of Life.
'India is known for its spices, and it became a theme I thought I could write my poem around,' she says.
Her poem, based on her impressions of the camp, so impressed poet Alvin Pang and Life! Senior Arts Correspondent Ong Sor Fern, that the two judges decided not only to give her the first prize, but also not to award a second or third prize.
Pang says: 'It is not that the other poems were all bad, but that so many were of about the same, middling standard that it would not be fair to award any prizes to one or two over the others. Many were good reads and raised a smile or two.'
Meanwhile, prose writers should ready their pens: The fourth, and final, contest seeks micro-fiction, or prose pieces that are 500 words long or less.
It will be judged by publisher Fong Hoe Fang of literary imprint Ethos, and Singapore Literature Prize Commendation Award-winning novelist Dave Chua.
The theme? The Great Escape.
Fong says the theme touches on mankind's constant quest for freedom.
'We are all dreamers at heart, each in our own way. Sometimes when we are faced with stressful situations, we tend to fantasise about getting out of, or exploiting, that situation,' he says.
'This would be a rich topic for writers to explore what they want to escape from, or escape to, in their lives.'
ysteph@sph.com.sg
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