A STUDENT at Queen Elizabeth's Community College, Crediton has won the first prize in the schools category of the 2010 Baskalier Poetry Anthology competition.

Ella Kershaw, a year 9 student won book tokens for her poem The Extinction of Dinosaurs and QECC are to receive several copies of the book Extinction: An Anthology of Poems, which features Ella's poem.

Ella explained: "When I was given the topic extinction, the first thing I thought about was dinosaurs, so that's what I wrote my poem about."

She added: "My favourite subject is English and I would like to be a writer of some sort as a career."

Ella's English teacher, Kate Bentham commented: "Ella is a very talented, creative student who is on Queen Elizabeth's gifted and talented register for her undoubted excellence in English.

"She is a valued member of an enthusiastic, highly-skilled and conscientious class and is an absolute pleasure to teach."

The book, contains the work of 30 poets worldwide, expressing their own take on what extinction means to them.

Extinction; An Anthology of Poems (ISBN 9780956354624) costs £6.95 and is available from Baskalier Publishing at http://www.baskalierpublishing.com">www.baskalierpublishing.com or from The Book Shop, Crediton.

Nora Parminter