THIS week the wine flowed at the Daily Echo offices when contributors to Creative Corner and the Daily Poem, their guests and a host of local writers gathered to congratulate the winners of the second Daily Echo writing competition.

Ian Murray, editor of the Daily Echo, opened the proceedings with the news that Polly Clark's residency with the Daily Echo has received lottery funding from Southern Arts to continue.

He said: "The new residency allows us to develop several exciting projects, one of which is the Schools Initiative.

"Selected schools across the region will be able to work with the Daily Echo to produce a special newspaper all about their school. The Schools Initiative will be launched by the Poet Laureate Andrew Motion in April.

"There will also be four more creative writing specials with a competition running in each. The next special is due out on May 4 - so keep an eye on Creative Corner to hear about the next competition. There are also plans to develop the Creative Corner website to contain more of your work.

"As well as these developments, Polly will also be taking on a more public role as our Poet in Residence, using poetry to engage with some of the issues that are important to our readers and throw some fresh light on them. You could say that we now have our own Poet Laureate at the Daily Echo. Keep sending her your poems and stories to Creative Corner."

Introducing the prize-giving, Polly Clark said: "The response to the competitions has grown tremendously. For this competition we had more than 200 entries in each category and a wonderfully varied response to the themes.

"The competitions are finding lots of new writing talent among the Daily Echo's readership.'

The winners of the short story competition were Emma Jolly (pictured), Caroline Wigley and Marie Thornton - who all received cheques from the judge Rebecca Smith.

In her speech, Rebecca said that judging the competition had been a wonderful experience with a very high standard of entry. Two of the winners of the poetry competition, Lee Tudor Pole (pictured) and Stella Davis, read their poems before receiving their cheques from Polly Clark.

Polly, who introduced the winning entries said: "The winners responded to the verse from Thomas Hardy's poem The Fallow Deer at Lonely House, which was the theme in many interesting ways. One of them was this idea of looking-in, of alienation. The winning poem, Scapegoats by Agnes Adobe, used this idea to talk about being an immigrant looking into an ideal picture of Britain. Her stunning poem stood out as a clear winner.

"Unfortunately, Agnes does not know she has won the competition, because shortly after entering it her visa ran out and she was obliged to leave the country, and none of her family knows where she is. Her sister Florence asked that we give her cheque to the organisation Bail for Immigration Detainees, which we will do."

The winners all received warm applause and the evening ended with the opportunity for all the writers to meet each other and swap their experiences of writing.

For news of the next competition keep watching this space - and get ready to write.