Carolyn O’Connell lives in Northwich in Cheshire and is a member of the Second Light network. She started to write poetry after working in the Civil Service and the RNIB. She is also a member of the Ormond Poetry Group, Vale Royal Writers Group (VRWG) Cheshire and Blaze (Mid-Cheshire Stanza). She has read for her local branch of the W.I. and, in early 2022, was interviewed for Chester Poets Vintage Radio. The interview is used under licence from Vintage Radio’s Poetry Roundup, Copyright © 2022 Vintage Radio. Listen to the broadcast
 
Her work has been published in The Interpreter’s House, Brando’s Hat, Envoi, and Airings, in 2009 in the Genius Floored series of anthologies arising from Ruth O’Callaghan’s Camden and Lumen readings, and has been featured on the BBCni website and Transparent Words. She was a prizewinner in the St. Thomas Aquinas Justice & Peace Poetry Competition, 2011. It has also been featured on Poetry Space, Stare’s Nest and I am Not a Silent Poet and other online magazines.
 
Carolyn’s poems were featured in National Poetry Day booklets published by John Powls for the National Probation Service in 2001 and 2003 and she has work accepted for Poems in the Waiting Room. Her poem Night Ride was Highly Commended in the Poetry Space Competition 2012, judged by Cheryl Moskowitz, and is published in Words That Signify (ISBN 978-909404-01-4), a collection of poems selected from those submitted to the competition and edited by Susan Jane Sims. Black Star was listed in the 2014 Competition and several published in the ‘Photo & Poetry Challenge’. Erosion was included in Paragram Remember Anthology 2014.
 
She worked with Richmond Libraries to promote poetry and has lead workshops, hosted at The Tea Box in Richmond and been a Guest Read at Rhythm & Muse. She now works with Cheshire West Libraries, running the Poetry Out Loud event at Sandiway Library, Northwich.
 
Having worked on the poetry pRO project her poems have been translated into Romanian and broadcast on Romania radio via the Translation Café of the University of Bucharest.
 
Her work has been published in America where she has collaborated with the author/poet Paul Morabito in the production of Mirrored Voices: Emerging Poets Anthology (ISBN13: 978-1-5077107-1-5) published by Star Investment Strategies LLC which seeks to promote unrecognised poets from accros the world. The first edition was published in January 2015 and is available both as print and e-book.
 
Her first collection, Timelines, is published by Indigo Dreams (2014, ISBN 978-1-9093575-3-2) and is also available at Ham House National Trust Bookshop.
 

Beautiful tender poems, rich in many ways: in O’Connell’s unique linguistic turns … in detailed imagery and its expression … in its unflinching observation of the ties that bind. Change whistles through these flawlessly-musical lines, wherein ‘emotions / are gathered with the fruit to savour / through the cold’ … Timelines has a vital energy …

Anne Stewart, poetry p f

With liberal use of colour, and a willingness to tackle a full range of emotions; joy, nostalgia, fear horror and regret. Carolyn’s well-crafted poetry collection reflects on the domestic, delights in the exotic, and bravely confronts uncomfortable aspects of war with honest empathy.

Susan Jane Sims, Poetry Space

Carolyn O’ Connell deftly handles a variety of themes – family the past, war nature. She has a particular gift for the short powerful poem and for telling detail.

Carole Bromley