Caroline Carver won the 1998 National Poetry Prize and has since published two collections: JIGHARZI AN ME, from Semicolon Press (in West Indian dialect), and BONE-FISHING, from Peterloo Poets. Her work has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, both here and overseas, and she’s just begun the hunt for a publisher for her third book.

Caroline’s a Hawthornden Fellow and currently poet-in-residence at Trebah Gardens in Cornwall. She’s very active in poetry affairs in the county and has a long involvement with the Falmouth Poetry Group. A number of her poems have recently been translated and broadcast on Romanian Radio, and BONE-FISHING will be published there in translation in 2009. In 2007, in company with Cornish poets Penelope Shuttle and Victoria Field, she went on a reading tour in Ontario, Canada and in New England/New York. Most recently she won the 2008 Silver Wyvern Prize from Poetry on the Lake, North Italy.

Unicorn of the 21st circle

Only the owl sees how I sleep
under the pomegranate tree encircled by flowers
dreaming I’m woven into tapestry
embroidered with forget-me-nots and campion

a maiden puts a chain round my neck
her soft hands pull at my thick mane
she sings magic into my ears
as she reaches for the winding horn of silver –

Merde! je suis une licorne serieuse mais
je deviendrais un sonnet polisson!

this maiden has unmaidenly hands
her songs are not about courtly love
I’m supposed to be a legend of innocence but I’ve slept too long
if I lay my head in her lap she’ll undo me