A NORTH-East student has won a foreign language poetry contest.

The Institute of Modern Languages Research, the British Museum and the German Academic Exchange Service challenged aspiring poets to produce a work of no more than 250 words, written in either German or English, inspired by an object from the Museum of London’s Germany – Memories of Nation exhibition.

The poetic form is known as a Dinggedicht, a poetry of objects.

Durham University student Rebecca Williamson triumphed in the undergraduate German language category with her poem Der Schweigende, based on Ernst Barlach’s hanging sculpture of a hovering angel.

She wins a German Academic Exchange Service scholarship for a language course at a German university next summer.

The contest received more than 180 entries from school and university students and organisers said participants showed real imagination and creativity, producing poems based on clocks, bank notes, sculptures and a handcart.

Karen Leeder, professor of modern German literature at Oxford University and a prize-winning translator of modern German poetry, said: “The best poems managed to say something about the thing itself and reflections on broader themes were channelled through a precise observation of the object under scrutiny.”

Godela Weiss-Sussex, senior lecturer in German literature at the Institute of Modern Languages Research, said: “Running this competition has been hugely rewarding, because of the sheer quality of the poems we received and the intensity of the writers’ engagement with German culture, history and language.”

All the winning entries will be read aloud at an event at the British Museum tonight (Friday, December 12).