THREE teenage girls from Oxfordshire who dared to share their innermost thoughts and feelings have won an international prize for poetry.

Yasmin Inkersole, 18, Abingdon, and Eva Brand Whitehead and Aisha Mango Borja, both 14, from Oxford, are all winners in this year's Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award.

They are among just 15 winners out of 6,000 young writers from around the globe who entered the world's largest poetry competition.

The girls were honoured today at an awards ceremony at the Festival Hall hosted by Ian McMillan.

Yasmin's winning poem is about her favourite childhood teddy bear Barnabas, but she explained it is also about growing up and leaving childhood behind.

The St Helen and St Katharine School pupil said: "As you grow up you lose touch with that other language of childhood.started writing writing as soon as she could type on a laptop but she mostly writes short stories.

She said: "Poetry is a lot less time-consuming so it's more practical on the bus to school or waiting for a friend on a bench – that is when poetry demands to be written.

"Poetry tends to be a lot more personal to me, I think a lot of writers would say that: any good poet has to be very honest, it is about putting yourself on the page.

"It is always quite emotionally-driven, and I'm half Turkish so that comes into it: pieces about feeling displaced and fragmented memories when you grow up living in two different countries."

When she found out she was one of this year's winners, Yasmin said she bounced around her bedroom then ran screaming into the garden.

Eva, who lives in East Oxford and goes to Oxford Spires Academy, said her winning poem, "Places to Cry", was about places she felt safe.

She explained: "It started in the garden where we have a huge apple tree, then I was in the next door neighbour's garden feeding the fish, then I am in the school toilet crying.

"It ends with me in my mother's arms under the redcurrant bush in the rain.

"I'm not sure why I was crying, I think I got really cross because I couldn't find my socks."

She said that while some poets might find the process therapeutic, she wrote poems purely as a fun way to express her feelings.

When she found out she had won, she said: "I was screaming down the phone I was so happy."

Aisha, who lives in Rose Hill and also goes to Oxford Spires, said her winning poem was about an unusual experience she had with her Columbian family.

She said: "In Columbia it is necessary when you are young to get your ears pierced and one time when I went they said 'you need to get your ears pierces otherwise you're not a girl'.

"That happened seven years ago, but I took that inspiration and wrote it down and when I wrote the poem it was like a diary because it was something that had been stirred up.

"I don't sit down and think 'this is a poem', I start writing and it makes itself.

"You never have a limit with a poem: it doesn't have to rhyme, but it is personal to you and no one will ever write poetry like you."