BENGALURU : Poetry has no barriers of language, religion or country. Good poetry can reach all heads and hearts,” says Srividya Prasad, all of 15 years sounding mature beyond her years, at the launch of her first-ever collection of poems, Voyage Through Verses recently.Srividya’s love for writing stems from her interest in reading. In the brief period of two years that her family had moved to the USA in 2008, she remembers scouring the library for books of her favourite author, Roald Dahl.
She would borrow 14 books from the library every week. “I think anyone can read Dahl’s works and enjoy it, no matter what age,” says the class tenth student of Sri Vani Public School, Rajajinagar. It’s no surprise that one day, she picked up her pen and put her thoughts onto paper. Srividya wrote her first poem, Spring, when she was in class two.
“I wrote this when I was in the US. I would write everything I observed about each season I saw there.” Her grandfather, HV Srinivasa, a writer and poet himself, who goes by the pen name, Sai Bindu, was also a great source of inspiration. Her parents, who immediately spotted her talent, encouraged her to continue writing, and recently, felt that it was time that she publish her collection of works.
Having grown up in an urban environment, Srividya’s writing is mostly on nature. Through her poems, one of them being, Save Rivers, she hopes that people will become more aware of their surroundings, and do their bit in saving the environment, because ‘even one step matters’.Her book is a collection of haikus, limericks and other forms. These forms, she says, she picked up at school.
She loves reading poems of Wordsworth, her favourite one being Daffodils. “I want my work to reflect the kind of things I read and love. I try making my poems a little humorous. Some day in the future, hopefully, if someone is reading my poems, they should not find it boring”, she says.As her parents point out, the seed of poetry has just begun sprouting and will surly bloom into pleasing flowers.