Poetry in motion as Winchester Writers Conference honours creative children (From This is Hampshire)

Poetry in motion as Winchester Writers Conference honours creative children

9:24am Friday 5th October 2012 in News By Joseph Curtis

CREATIVE children were celebrated last weekend by Winchester Writers' Conference.

The winners of the conference's Young Writers' Poetry Competition were honoured with a party at Winchester Discovery Centre on Saturday (sept 29).

Barbara Large, director of the conference, said the standard of entries was improving every year.

She said: “The collection of poems submitted this year was outstanding. We had a wonderful Haiku winner in one category and we had 320 entries altogether which grew from last year. It was a fantastic competition.”

James Riddiford, 16, who won the age 16-18 category, carried on his family's literary excellence this year after his mother Marian won the conference's short story competition earlier this year.

Marian, of Kilham Lane, Winchester, said: “We are both interested in writing and James finished off his poem very quickly so I'm very impressed with him.”

James, a Peter Symonds College student, added: “I had just finished my Geography GCSE and that was quite close to the theme of wildlife and so I decided to write about the beach rather than British wildlife.”

Keeping with the theme, Marwell Wildlife provided the prizes with family tickets to the Colden Common park for winners and a pair of children's tickets to each of the runners up.

Paul Simmons, Marwell head of marketing, said: “It's very encouraging to see these children write about the environment and many of the older ones wrote about conservation which is a big part of what we do, so who knows, maybe we will have some of them knocking on our door for a job one day?”

Age 6-11 category - Winner Maddy Ginger (10) with Broken Bird Age 12-15 category - Winner Lee Parker (don't have an age) with I'm the Only Elephant in Africa Age 16-18 category - Winner James Riddiford (16) with Hands Off!