THE best poems written by Darlington schoolchildren for a national contest have been published.

The Poetry Odyssey competition attracted more than 50,000 entries throughout the country.

Judges sifted through the entries from Darlington and have selected the top five.

The winners have now been published in a book called 2001: A Poetry Odyssey Darlington.

Danielle Hossell from Carmel RC Technology College won £20 for submitting the best entry.

The four runners up each received £5 book tokens. They are Saskia Van Vlijmen from Carmel and Hurworth Comprehensive School pupils Emily Eeles, Simon Ainslie and Romeela Rana-Rahman.

Steve Twelvetree, managing director of Remus House, which organised the competition, said: "Selecting the prize winners has been an exceedingly difficult and time consuming task.

"Selecting just five poems per book is probably one of the hardest decisions the editorial team has to make."

A spokeswoman for Hurworth Comprehensive said: "They chose five in total and three are from our school so they've done really well. I was amazed when I saw how good they are."