A TALENTED boy from Whitchurch has won a national poetry competition run by an environmental charity to help children cope with isolation during the Covid-19 lockdown.

Jamie Carlton won the eight to 11 years age category with his poem Deer.

He said he was ‘so excited’ to win and, returning to Whitchurch Primary School this week, he has read the poem out to his class.

The competition was launched as part of a range of events organised by Earthwatch to help families cope with lockdown and remain connected to nature, including a popular online programme of indoor and outdoor learning activities called Wild Days.

The competition ran from April 27 to May 17 with four categories for children aged seven and under; aged eight to 11; 12 to 16; and for schools.

Jamie, pictured right, was one of three winners in his age group alongside Lucy Farrell from Sunderland and Aimee Berkhoff from Cheshire.

Commenting on Jamie’s poem, head judge Michaela Strachan, who presented the Really Wild Show on TV, said: ‘This was so beautiful and almost romantic. It had a lovely unique flair and a beautiful use of poetic language. Loved the phrase ‘forest brave -heart’.’

She led a panel of judges which included Nick Baker, her co-presenter on the Really Wild Show; Mya-Rose Craig, the world’s top teen birder; and Bella Lack, a 17-year-old conservationist and blogger with 150,000 followers on Twitter.

Winners received nature nurturing gift packs with packets of wildflower seeds and mini-nature kits; a copy of Diary of a Naturalist by 16-year-old naturalist Dara McAnulty, field guidebooks from Princeton University Press’s WildGuide series, encouraging families to explore and engage with nature again when the lockdown is over, plus signed copies of Nick Baker’s Baker’s Bug Book or Michaela Strachan’s Really Wild Adventures.

Here are two verses from Jamie’s poem Deer.

Deer leaps and bounds through the broad forest

A brown flash in the light, his shadow never seen.

This brown-blur, forest brave-heart

Swift-footed, crowned with antlers.

Each day when sun comes up, he forages at forests edge,

then he’s off, back into the shadowed depths

of mighty Oaks, graceful Ash and grey barked Hazel

This place where he lives, a wonderous land.