Ubud, October 11, 2010 – The room was packed. People from all ages were gathering in The Pond restaurant that evening where one of the 3rd night of the 2010 Citibank - Ubud Writers & Readers Festival’s activities took place. In a glance there was nothing unusual of the crowd there, all of them were anticipating the upcoming Poet Slam competition where people should create spontaneous poetry and perform it.
The impression changed after a 15-year old Gadtardi Pratama Wongkaren, a year-10 student of Global Jaya International School, rose up in the final against a 60-year old female English teacher from Australia, and won! Needless to say, this is one of the highlights on the 5-day festival for readers and writers in Ubud, not only for Gadtardi and his teachers but also for other poet appreciators present in that room.
Asked later after the festival ended what he thought about his winning on the poet slam, Gadtardi expressed he was happy to win such competition. Being low profile as he always was, he mentioned that he was lucky to come up with poet ideas that most of the judges favored of that night, ‘I happened to write spontaneously a simple poet with enthusiastic words and rhymes which the judges prefer more than my competitors’.’ He was also pleased to have the chance to attend this international event where he could meet numerous writers from all over the world with their various unique backgrounds.
The 2010 Citibank - Ubud Writers & Readers Festival is an annual event which mission is to create a world class literary event that brings together diverse Indonesian and international voices for dialogue and exchange in order to share stories, ideas and their craft in the spirit of cross-cultural understanding; foster greater international awareness and understanding of Indonesian literary cultures; create opportunities for Indonesian writers to present their work to a global audience; and expose Indonesian audiences to the work of international writers.
The festival has ended on October 10, 2010, so those who are interested to join should wait until next year, but it was such a wonderful learning experience that all participants, especially the school students, could enhance their love and understanding of language and literature through in an internationally diverse environment.