THEY could be the next Jane Austen or William Wordsworth.

Hampshire’s young writing talent was celebrated last weekend at the Winchester Writers’ Conference Young Writers’ Poetry Competition awards ceremony.

A staple of the conference, sponsored by the Hampshire Chronicle and Daily Echo, it gives youngsters a chance to express themselves and develop their skills.

This year’s category was the elements and judge Keith Bennett, founder of the New Forest Poetry Society, said the calibre of entries was excellent.

Speaking at Saturday’s ceremony (Oct 12) at Winchester Discovery Centre, he said: “I can’t tell you what makes one poem better than another but all the poems heard today had a quality of excellence from my point of view.

“There’s a lot of good writing going on out there in our schools and among children and I think it’s brilliant.”

The winners were 11-year-old Harry Phillips for the six-11 category, Josephine Garot, 12, for the 12-15 category and Lucy Cunningham, 16, in the 16-18 division.

Judith Heneghan, new director of the conference, said she hoped the young poets competition would continue to thrive.

She said: “There’s nothing else for young people at the conference and it is really important that we have this outreach for them. We had 500 entries this year and an enormous amount of work went into judging them.

“It’s been great fun listening to these poems and they have been really inspirational.”