Romsey School was the final school I gave poetry classes to as part of the Daily Echo Kids Verse campaign.

It's been a busy few weeks in the run-up to the competition's close, where I have visited as many schools as possible to give the pupils a start in writing poems. This week was National Book Week and lots of schools have been supplementing their usual curriculum with extra activities to encourage a love of reading. The Kids Verse competition has given many schools something to plan their activities around and entries have been flooding in.

At Romsey School I gave a class to youngsters aged from ten to 15. Throughout my run of visits I have been fascinated by the difference in response to poetry by different age groups. As children get older they start to acquire the self consciousness that makes most adults think they cannot write poetry. The ten-year-olds have no such worries, they simply plunge in. But if you can overcome the older children's shyness you can unlock some wonderful talent, which I certainly did at Romsey and at other schools.

At Romsey School there's been a real attempt to get the children to think about poetry and have a go in the run-up to the competition. For the poems here, the children were given an icy pond as a theme and asked to write a poem from an unexpected point of view. This is the wonderful thing about poetry: it can unlock so much that is surprising, it encourages inventiveness in language and storytelling.

As the competition draws to a close (closing date 10 March), I'd like to thank the schools which have taken the wonderful opportunity to show off the talent of their students.

Now comes the hard part - reading all the entries and finding winners. We'll be discovering nine prize-winning poets, and also featuring as many of the poems as possible in a special supplement in the spring.