Isabel named as runner-up in poetry competition

Haileybury pupil Isabel McCann has been named as one of the runners-up in the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award for 2003. The competition is one of the biggest of its kind in Britain and this year had more than 6 000 entries from writers between the ages of 11 and 18.

She will attend the prize giving at The Royal Festival Hall on 9 October. Special guests at the party will include Roger McGough and Poet Laureate Andrew Motion.

Isabel entered a selection of poems for the competition, most of which she says were inspired by the minutiae of school life.

"I am very pleased and excited to be a runner-up, especially because it was such a surprise. I’d entered it on a wet Sunday afternoon and completely forgotten about it! It is really special and a great confidence booster to have a stranger like your writing," she says.

This year marks the sixth year of the Award. Previous winners have gone on to be published by Carcanet Press, in established poetry journals, and their work has graced London’s tube trains as part of Young Poets on the Underground.