Over the past years, I have had the good fortunate to get to know Carolyn and her poetry. I think all poetry lovers should know about her latest collection.
Carolyn is a Reader in Victorian English at Canterbury Christ Church University. Her collection, A Child, a Death and the Making of the Fairytale Woman registers Carolyn’s interest in Victorian and modern mythmaking as well as the landscape of East Kent. In this beautiful book, she has created a life with all its humour and tragedy, dreams and fears, out of a language mixed with beauty and simplicity. Both quiet and powerful, this is poetry that carries you along in waves, like the sea that crashes through it. It stays with you, reverberating in your ear and your heart.
Here is an excerpt, the poem from which the title of the book is taken. After reading it, you might well want to order it from the publisher, BeWrite Books, here, as well as the usual other sources.
A Child, a Death and the Making of the Fairy Tale Woman
before being fingered to bits; a small pair of fists
might be almost enough to keep them back.
On subsequent days,
treading ice – a parent will tell
of holding the child in air
like a juggling ball –
collision and tumble,
steep then flat, the snow
implodes. And there is waiting
again – pouring fast over ridges of air,
scrambling over the height of the garden,
cars are sludge and grime on the dual carriageway –
there is waiting for a phone
to ring. A single robin
flaps against a window. You see they die.
You can paste the figures back onto
an appropriate landscape. Who knows why
in some versions, the hair is cut off
or the cinders grind? All the time
remember, there is blood in a sister’s shoe.
It doesn’t matter. What you can’t get back
always, is an outline, quite the right shape,
to edge onto the backdrop,
and the snow
falls angrily in rags, fades to water
where it bumps against bare skin.
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