A 19-year-old student has won a $10,000 overseas writing retreat with two of her friends, after taking home the top prize at the 2015 Poetry Olympics in Sydney on Nov. 25.

Sharnay Mkhayber’s team ‘Nine Lives’, which included teammates Iman Etri and Shalice Tiata, competed with 24 other poets in front of an intense crowd of 300. Their winning poem was about standing up and speaking out about domestic violence by providing real life examples of particular ordeals - fitting considering the event coincided with White Ribbon Day.

“Our group poem was very aggressive in its performance,” Mkhayber said.

Hosted for the first time by non-profit organisation Bankstown Poetry Slam, the 2015 Poetry Olympics was sponsored by the Art Gallery of NSW and supported by the Arab Bank Australia. It aims to showcase the best poems, read and recited by their creators.

The executive director of the Art Gallery Society of NSW, Judith White, co-presented the Poetry Olympics and was one of the judges, which also included actor Bryan Brown and Sydney Writer’s Festival artistic director Jemma Birrell.

“The most engaging event, brilliantly organised, uplifting and hugely enjoyable,” White told the International Business Times, adding that she found the passion of the poets to be awe-inspiring and being a judge challenging, “because they were all so good! But great fun.”

White’s favourite poem from the night was ‘What a feminist looks like’ by Iman Etri, from the winning team, which scored a standing ovation.

“It was just very moving,” Sara Mansour from the Bankstown Poetry Slam said. “I guess also very relevant because it’s something that we all have to struggle with at the moment as women.”

Mansour founded the the Bankstown Poetry Slam with Ahmad Al-Rady in 2013 - the first in Western Sydney and today the largest slam in the country.

“We were quite into [poetry] but we didn’t like having to travel all the way down to Newtown or the city...it was just a random idea really,” Mansour told IBTimes. “It’s a free event, so from the get go we didn’t want any money at all or anything like that. It was purely just for the community. And I think that’s why it has taken off and been so successful.”

Mansour believes the Bankstown Poetry Slam is a really important and rewarding community initiative as it gives a platform for local artists in the Western Sydney region, such as Etri and Mkhayber, to express themselves.

Mkhayber became involved in the Poetry Olympics when she came second at a monthly Bankstown Poetry Slam.

“Writing a poem can be a truly draining thing. Sometimes a line will come to mind; it’ll become a rhythm in your head until you write it down somewhere. Sometimes poems don’t finish, but when they do, they have the power to change lives . . . I’ve been writing for a while. I finally went to watch one in October, and finally, in November I decided to actually perform,” she said.

“Poetry is an art that allows people to vocally express anything they want. There are no limits, no expectations and most importantly, no set ways to do things. This is why I became a poet.”

The Bankstown Poetry Slam also organises school projects and wants to continue facilitating spoken word workshops in schools to get kids to engage in the artistic form.

The organisation has had the opportunity to travel interstate as part of poetry tours and has also aided in the professional development of poets that come to the slam.

Already achieving so much in just two years, Mansour hopes to take the community initiative to a grander scale in the future.

“Bankstown Poetry Slam is a success story. It started small, but we can say we truly made it,” adds Mkhayber.

The $10,000 prize won by ‘Nine Lives’ was sponsored by Western Sydney University.

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