Aashvi counts her lucky stars

Aashvi Agarwal from Holy Cross Catholic Primary School in Liverpool has been named as the North West regional winner of the inaugural Premier League Writing Stars competition.

Aashvi’s poem ‘Count to Ten’ was selected as the winning poem for the North West region in the Key Stage 1 age group.

The winning poem was selected by an all-star judging panel, which featured former professional footballer and children’s author Frank Lampard OBE, Premier League footballer and lyricist Yannick Bolasie, Children’s Laureate Lauren Child and the young people’s laureate for London Caleb Femi, overseen by the National Literacy Trust director, Jonathan Douglas.

Commenting on Aashvi’s poem, Lauren Child said: “Everyone was pretty impressed by the way Aashvi has put rhyming in so successfully. Her poem has a real powerful feeling behind it, it’s very upbeat. I think we all loved the last two lines especially, they are very strong and rather joyful, so well done to Aashvi.”

More than 25,000 children from England and Wales entered the competition with their own original poetry submissions. From the 25,200 poems received, nine regional winners and one national winner have been selected across two age groups, Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2, with the poems being judged on their originality, effect, tone and message.

The winning poems will now be published in a special Writing Stars poetry book due to be released later this year. Other prizes include author-led writing workshops and Premier League trophy school visits, as well as winning poems being read aloud by football stars.

The competition was supported by the National Literacy Trust and is part of the Premier League Primary Stars education programme, which has already engaged more than 12,000 primary schools and 13,000 teachers across England and Wales