Thank you all for your entries into Poole Writers' Circle poetry competition. We have thoroughly enjoyed reading them and I must say you have all given the judges a very hard job! There have been funny poems, beautifully descriptive and evocative ones, others that tug at the heartstrings and all of a very high quality.

The judging panel read and discussed all the poems and that resulted in a 'long short-list.' The 'long short-list' was then whittled down to a 'shorter short-list.'

We were all in agreement over which poem to put in first place. There then followed more hours of rereading aloud, rereading to ourselves, and discussion until we ended up with the complete list of prizewinning poems and those that we felt justified being 'highly commended'.