The winners of a city-wide limerick competition for young writers have been announced today as part of our Read On Nottingham campaign in Nottingham City.
The competition challenged children aged 9 to 14 living in Nottingham City to pen witty limericks describing what they love about their city and the people who live there.
The winning limericks
The judges picked their favourite limericks from the entries with a winner chosen from each school year group.
Click on the images to read the winning limericks with judges comments.
Each winner will receive a set of brand new books, family sports tickets (generously donated by Nottingham Rugby Club for when fixtures are rescheduled) and £20 in book tokens to stock-up on their favourite titles. All qualifying entries will also receive a free book for taking part in the writing competition.
National Writing Day
As Read On Nottingham rewards its young writers, we published new research today to mark National Writing Day which shows that lockdown has inspired a resurgence in children and young people’s creative writing, which has in turn played an important role in supporting their wellbeing during this time of uncertainty.
1 in 5 (21%) children and young people are writing more poetry, including limericks, during lockdown than they did before; and children who said that writing during lockdown makes them feel better were five times more likely to write poetry (66.5% vs 13.4%) than children who didn’t agree.
The rise in creative writing was attributed by many children and young people to lockdown providing them with the inspiration and conditions they need to write more creatively, such as having more time and space to think and generate ideas, and having the option to write using devices.
It has been an absolute joy to read all the wonderfully witty poems entered into our limerick competition! With the news that more young people have been turning to creative writing during lockdown, it was fantastic to witness this surge in creativity first-hand.
Charlotte Malik, Manager of Read On Nottingham