Carolyn was a winner in The Ilkley Literature Festival National Poetry Competition 2014 with her poem Threshold.

Judge Moniza Alvi wrote: “A delicate portrayal of the loss of a father. This is a lucid, deceptively simple poem … A rite of passage is subtly conveyed and made complex with two immense life-changes happening simultaneously. The poem is all the more moving for its elegance and restraint.”

Carolyn was also a competition winner in 2007 with The Sweetseller. Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy described it as “a very human,informally constructed poem which is as memorable as a painting”.

magazines and journals

Haiku Quarterly
Mslexia
Staple
Other Poetry
Magma
The Reader
The Yellow Crane
The Affectionate Punch
Neon Highway
DreamCatcher
The Rockvale Review

collections

Apus – a chapbook of 20 poems inspired by the life of Frida Kahlo – is published by The Red Ceilings Press.

anthologies

Voices of the Don, Don Catchment Rivers Trust, 2018
Driftfish, Zoomorphic, 2016
Millstone Grit, Antiphon, 2016
The Sheffield Anthology, Smith/Doorstop, 2012
Storm At Galesburg, Cinnamon, 2008

other

A runner-up in the Cinnamon mini-contest 10. Dark Interiors with Gipsywort from the Dark River poems.

Carolyn was joint-organiser and performer for Mexican Day of the Dead 2018 – a multi-arts event including a performance of her poetry after Frida Kahlo at the SIA Gallery.

A collaborative project with visual artist Michael Hutchinson inspired by the River Don was included in the University of Sheffield’s Festival of the Mind in September 2012 under an event called WordSurge. An exhibition of the Sheffield stage of the project entitled Dark River was also staged at Kelham Island Industrial Museum with a reading event for Off The Shelf Festival 2012. Click here for an interview with the artists.

Prize-winning poem The Sweet Seller was part of a collection of poems on Cuba,
Dreams and Defiance exhibited with photographs by Paul Schatzberger for Sheffield’s Off The Shelf Festival 2009. That year she was also a winner in the Mslexia Poetry Competition.

In 2000, a poem on wind turbines, Not Born of the Earth, was used as the basis of a short film, shown at the Penistone Paramount Cinema and screened at international film festivals. See also Publications and Events pages. Audio Casts of Readings of Che, From The Roof of the Casa Granda and The Sweet Seller from Dreams and Defiance plus an interview by Angela Robson