I’ve always written.  Writing is my means of capturing and interpreting experience (my own and that of others).  Sometimes it’s a solace.  Often it’s a challenge.  Always it’s unexpected.  I’m interested in the diversity and abundance of the world.  If I can record some element of that, then I’m satisfied – for a few hours, at least.  This year (2010) I’m writing a poem a day for the whole year.  I’ll let you know how I get on, and post some of them on this site.   

In December 2009 Hawthorn Press published ‘Yes’, my second collection of poetry, containing some of the poems that have won prizes over the past few years.  The title poem is given below.  I’m doing some readings to promote the book: take a look at the News page of this website.  You can buy the book for £5 by emailing me at the address given on the Contacts page. 

I’ve just finished a novel set in the Second World War, supported by an Arts Council England grant, which will be published shortly.  I’m also busy writing songs and performing with Songbirds, (with the singer and percussionist, Dee Orr) and the Stepney Resisters (see picture in the Gallery page).          

I offer mentoring on a one-to-one basis, run workshops, and teach at the University of East Anglia and the Open University.  I’ve run writing residencies in tiny villages in the Ribble Valley, in The London Hospital, Mile End, in schools and offices (including the offices of the Eastern Daily Press).  In 2009 I was a poet in residence in St Margaret’s church, East Ruston, as part of the Art Alive project.  From 2006 to 2009 I was chair of the Festival Committee of Poetry-next-the-Sea, the poetry festival held in Wells-next-the-Sea.  Keen to explore the blurring of boundaries between art forms, I’m a member of the Inprint collaborative group of writers and visual artists.      

Welcome to my site.  If you want to contact me, please do.  I’d love to hear from you. 

Biography

Caroline Gilfillan was brought up in Sussex and spent her formative years in east London writing, playing in various bands, and working in publishing and education.  She came to Norfolk after taking an MA in Creative Writing, and has settled close to the North Norfolk coast.  A fiction writer, poet, and dramatist, she was selected for the Escalator scheme for fiction writers in 2007, and awarded a grant from Arts Council England in 2008. Her novel, This is Nylon uses as its canvas the sprawl and upheaval of the Second World War. 

She’s written poetry all her life, and her work was published in Seven Women and One Foot on the Mountain early in her writing career.  She was shortlisted for the best Forward Prize for an individual poem in 2007 and her work appeared in the Forward Collection of Poetry in the same year.  She was a winner of the North West Poetry competition in 2000, and Drowned in Overspill, a collection of her poetry, was published by Crocus Books in the same year.  Yes, her new collection, was published in December 2009.

In 2007/2008 she was a winner of Channel 4’s The Radio Play’s the Thing competition, and is developing her script for broadcast.  She’s won several national short story competitions, and her poems and short stories have appeared recently in The London Magazine, Poetry News and Mslexia. 
She’s currently developing fiction, dramas for radio and stage, and a second collection of poetry.  She’s recently taken to the stage again with Dee Welding in the duo Songbirds.  Her second novel will jump into the murky pond of the music business.  She can be contacted via the contact page of this website.

Yes

Shipped back after shrapnel
has sliced one eye,
you’ll be lounging one damp July afternoon
against the warehouse doors, a Woodbine
fogging your hawk head.  Your hair will be
clipped, oiled, dark as bitterest French coffee.
Your boots will be slick-shined, your collar
loose on the pulse of a sunburnt throat.

ATS Privates will skitter past, holding their
caps in flurries of rain.  One will stumble. 
You’ll notice the slender cast of her skull,
the span of her mouth.  You’ll like the protractor
angles of elbows and knees.  You’ll notice
her ankles gloved in translucent skin.    

You’ll grab her wrist, stop her from slipping,
stop her from blooding her darned stockings. 
The odour of blankets piled in the shed,
smelling of sheep, smelling of the grassy
dip behind a horse’s pricked ears, will
merge with the breath of a home perm, 
a blouse hand-scrubbed in Fairy soap. 

Your injured eye will throb.  You’ll think
of porridge, of tea, of a dip in a bed.
You’ll ask if she’ll meet you in the mess.

And, after a pause, my mother will say Yes.

Caroline Gilfillan
Awarded First Prize, Fakenham Poetry Circle Competition