The seventh iteration of the QC Awards 2017: Youth Poetry Slam concluded on Friday announcing five young poets as winners—Yaman Thapa, Mansi Dahal, Kriti Sitaula, Prashuma Rai and Pragya Bhandari. 

The finale event which was held at Nepal Tourism Board selected the five winners from 20 finalists who performed slam poetry on various topics ranging from battling anxiety, depression, gender inequality, disappearances during conflict to relationships troubles. 

The finale of the slam saw two rounds of competitions—the first round saw all the 20 participants performing their slams and while only the top scoring 10 finalist moved on to second round. The judging panel for the competition included Viplob Pratik, Niranjan Kunwar, Shreeti Pradhan, Nishchal Neupane and Pushpa Palanchoke. 

One of the judges, Niranjan Kunwar, told the Post: “Most of the women participants selected more personal and unique topics compared to men who stuck to cliché topics like patriotism and mother.” He added, “The poems by the women appealed more to me and that might have been reflected it the scores by the judges and the result of all-female winners this year.” 

The finalists were mentored by five spoken word poetry instructors from the Word Warriors—Larisa Shrestha, Prakash Chandra Jimba, Rochak Dahal, Samip Dhungel and Yukta Bajracharya for the finale. 

The 20 finalists were selected from more than 150 applicants from school and colleges around Kathmandu. Prior to the auditions, the participants were introduced to the concept of spoken word poetry and its inroad to Nepal by the instructors of Word Warriors through workshops.

The competition was organised by Quixote’s Cove and Word Warriors in association with Thames International college.