GREAT WOMEN OF OUR TIME 2019

ARTS & MEDIA

Pooja Nansi, 37

Director, Singapore Writers Festival

“I want to hear a poem about Singapore”… goes the first line of Pooja’s . Growing up in the East of our Little Red Dot, Pooja used to see people from all walks of life but she never saw them represented in her school books. Becoming a poet simply helped her chart her observances and give her memories some permanence. So imagine her surprise when she was named as Director of the famed Singapore Writers Festival (SWF) this year. “I don’t think I ever thought I would be doing this job. It’s been a cool but unexpected trajectory going from teaching, to organising independent poetry gigs, making my own work and then getting to helm a national festival,” she says. “The light bulb moment that led me to accepting this job was realising it was an opportunity to broaden mindsets about the power of literature and the writer and spoken word.” When asked what she