ZOMDL to Inspire Students’ Creativity with Poetry Challenge

The need to constantly engage students nationwide has inspired Zacchaeus Onumba Dibiaezue Memorial Libraries (ZODML) to institute a Poetry Challenge open to students in public tertiary institutions. The competition, with the theme ‘Motherhood’, has received over 700 submissions and aims to teach a competitive spirit among Nigerian students and challenge them to think intellectually.

According to Ifeoma Esiri, the brain behind ZODML, while sharing insights on the ‘Poetry Challenge’, the competition tends to awaken the students’ creative process. In constructing a poem for the challenge, students will develop skills of creative self-expression and experimentation with language. The challenge will set them to think and then prepare and formulate their thoughts.

On the choice of a ‘Poetry Challenge’, Esiri stated that the students that join the challenge would be exposed to good literature as they would need to read literary works to do well, adding that it would allow them to acquire language skills leading to better performance in their studies.

Speaking further, Esiri noted that the challenge received 791 submissions, out of which 232 were rejected for various reasons, adding that the number would further be narrowed down to 10 finalists 10, which would be announced on Mother’s Day, which is 14 May, in line with the challenge’s theme of Motherhood.

Meanwhile, the challenge will culminate in an award event in the presence of stakeholders of the literary community in Nigeria. The overall winner will receive a N100,000 cash prize, while four runners-up will get N10,000 each.