Winners of the Children’s Poetry Competition - Christmas 2025
We are delighted to announce the winners of our first-ever poetry competition for children. The theme of this year’s competition was ‘Christmas Traditions’ and we received a huge number of entries, so the winners, runners up, and highly commended poems have done incredibly well.
The winner of the primary age group is Joni Willitts (8)
The winner of the secondary age group is Connor Miskimmin (11)
Huge congratulations to Joni and Connor, who both win a £20 gift certificate for Teasel & Skylark Books and a certificate of recognition.
You can hear their poems being read by Dorchester’s Town Crier, Anthony Harrison, in the videos below.
Dorchester’s Town Crier reads the winning poem in the primary age group by Joni Willitts
Dorchester’s Town Crier reads the winning poem in the secondary age group by Connor Miskimmin
The runners up in the primary age group are:
Ruby Duffy (10)
Verity Graves (9)
The runners up in the secondary age group are:
Finlay Hall (12)
Lottie Allison (13)
Well done to all the runners up, who each win a £10 gift voucher for Teasel & Skylark Books and a certificate of recognition.
You can see all of these poems in the gallery below.
To reflect the huge number of entries we received, the judges also selected a number of poems that were ‘Highly Commended’.
Highly commended poems in the primary age group were from:
Tilly Richardson (8)
Fionn Morrow Mateo (5)
Poppy Pink (10)
Highly commended poems in the secondary age group were from:
Sasha-Mae Bartlett (11)
Zara Evans (12)
Grace (13)
Well done to our ‘highly commended’ poets, who each win a certificate of recognition.
You can see all of these poems in the gallery below.
Thanks to our wonderful judges for all of the time and effort they put into reading the poems and selecting the winners. They are Dorchester Mayoress, Mel Lane, Dorchester’s Town Crier, Anthony Harrison, and local artist and performer, Alastair Braidwood. Thanks judges!
And finally, in addition to the judges selection, we couldn’t resist picking our favourite poem.
Our pick was by Teddy Pink (6) and his poem can be seen in the photo below.
Teddy wins a book as a prize - very well done, Teddy.
