Downsell Primary School pupil Diana Melnyk with her award-winning poem
A 12-year-old has beaten off hundreds of applicants to win a poetry competition.
Diana Melnyk of Downsell Primary School in Downsell Road, Leyton, impressed judges her entry about an imaginary land.
The Fun Palace won the Children's Legacy Poems competition, run by the Legacy List – a charity centred on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford.
More than 437 children entered the competition, but Diana’s verse featuring squirrels burping and snails slurping emerged victorious.
She read her winning entry out to a packed audience at the Olympic Park last night and was presented with a certificate and £50 worth of book tokens.
Of the thirteen runners up, seven were from Waltham Forest.
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