A haiku contest highlighted global connections at Vancouver Island University.
Lily Banerjee is enrolled in post-graduate business studies at VIU but she also shines as a poet.
Banerjee, an MBA student from India, took top honours in a haiku contest held in conjunction with International Development week at the university.
Banerjee won the overall prize as well as top spot among entrants whose first language is not English for the entry:
After the tsunami
A girl wiping the sky
From the floor
Haiku is a traditional form of Japanese poetry. It’s three lines and while there are strict formats about the number of syllables per line, the restrictions were eased for the VIU competition.
“Writing is my passion,” said Banerjee, who had no trouble finding inspiration for her entry.
Banerjee was living in Malaysia in 2004 when a tsunami hit and caused devastating loss of lives and damaged her grandmother’s birthplace in south India.
She cannot forget the pain she saw in her grandmother’s eyes and Banerjee’s entry was written in memory of her.
“It was the first thing that came to mind,” she said.
Banerjee is set to graduate this year but is already in the process of opening Kerneel Corporation, a firm focused on creative digital communications. She intends to use her education to provide a variety of services in the fields of digital media, business process outsourcing and advertising.
The haiku competition attracted strong interest on campus, said Meg Savory, international grants and projects coordinator at VIU.
“We had 50 entries from 35 participants,” she said, noting that entries came from students, faculty and staff in a variety of programs.
With participants’ names blanked out, the competition was judged by Harvey Jenkins, a retired VIU employee and published haiku poet.