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Thursday 29 Oct 2015 - 11:24 Makkah mean time-16-1-1437
Yale senior Emi Mahmoud poses with the iWPS trophy. Photo from Yale News
Yale, US (IINA) - A US Yale senior Muslim student has won recently the Individual World Poetry Slam Championship (iWPS), according to media reports.
Entering the final round of the competition, Emtithal “Emi” Mahmoud had drawn the last slot for the last bout. Despite the high-pressure situation, she performed a piece she had finished only hours before. And she won.
One day before the final, she performed two poems, “People Like Us” and “Bullets,” in which she talks about her memories of a war-torn Darfur.
In the former, she notes that “Flesh was never meant to dance with silver bullets,” and she has seen “16 ways to stop a heart.”
The Yale senior was crowned the iWPS champion recently in an event boasted an initial field of 96 poets, the largest yet in competition history. The annual four-day competition was organized by Beltway Poetry Slam and Poetry Slam Inc. (PSi), and attracts some of the world’s best poets.
In addition to the main competition, the championship includes workshops, open mics, and events for all ages.
Mahmoud, who is originally from Darfur, Sudan, came to the US as a toddler in 1998. She was first attracted to poetry after seeing a spoken word performance by Sean Beckett 13.
As her grandmother, who lived in Sudan, passed away during the competition, her parents told her to go to the competition because her grandmother would have wanted her to be there.
Winning the competition, Mahmoud said her whole experience with iWPS underscores the therapeutic benefits of poetry.
SM/IINA
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