KATHMANDU: Kabita Rai of Bhojpur district has emerged as the winner in the National Poem Competition-2078 BS organized today.

Amrita Ismriti of Dhading district has secured second position and Bardia’s Niranjana Kumari Chand, Taplejung’s Sabita Baral and Nuwakot’s Prakash Silwal have stood third in the competition.

Rai had penned and submitted ‘Desh ko Naksha’ (The map of the country), Ismriti’s ‘Dadhelo Pachi Basanta Aaucha’ (Spring arrives after a wildfire), Chand’s ‘Yugin Pratidhwani’ (epochal eco), Baral’s ‘Aama ma Aaye aba’ (Here I come, mother!) and Silwal’s ‘Bodhisatwa ko khop’ (The vaccine of Bodhisatwa’s ).

The winner of the competition will receive Rs 50,000 while the second will take home Rs 40,000. Similarly, those securing third position will get Rs 30,000 each, according to the Nepal Academy which had organized the poetry competition.

The winner and the runner-ups will be feted with a certificate of honor as well in an apt time.

Academy’s chancellor Ganga Prasad Uprety, inaugurating the 64th anniversary of the Academy, shared that the national poem competition was conceived by Mahakavi(The Great Poet) Laxmi Prasad Devkota and executed by Yugkavi (The poet of era) Siddicharan Shrestha.

Coordinator of the National Poem Competition-2078 BS and Academy’s member Prof Dr Hemnath Poudel said that any literary creations depicting the realities would come out as the best ones.

Another member of the Academy Prof Jagat Prasad Upadhyay expressed his happiness over the good literary creations utilizing the time during prohibitory order enforced to contain the second wave of COVID-19.

There were a total of 764 contenders vying in the poem competition. Out of them, 41 were shortlisted. Eight Nepalis residing in various countries abroad had also applied in the competition while participants from 20 districts in the country had submitted their poems, shared communication coordinator at the Academy, Sashi Lumumbu.

On the occasion, altogether 15 staffers at the Academy were honored with cash prizes (worth Rs 15,000 each) in recognition of their longstanding service to the Academy.