Poet Profile

Caroline Gourlay

I studied piano at the Royal Academy of Music, London, and taught for a couple of years before training and working as a social worker. In 1967, I married my farmer husband and came to live on the Welsh Border where we brought up three sons and have lived ever since. My interest in haiku started in 1994 when I joined the British Haiku Society, becoming membership secretary, then editor of Blithe Spirit between 1998 and 2000. I am currently a member of the Haiku Society of America.

Awards and Other Honors: James Hackett International Haiku Award (1996); Tanka Splendor Award (1997).

Books Published: Crossing the Field (Redlake Press, 1995); Reading All Night (Hub Press, 1999); Through the Café Door (Snapshot Press, 2000); Lull Before Dark (Brooks Books, 2005).

forest pool
a boy skims his flat stone
across the silence

winter chill—
catching the look
in your eye

touching you
as you lie sleeping—
the days shorten

closing the lid . . .
a cloud too big
for the sky

eating in silence—
the elongated fingers
of the icon

all those things
I wish now I’d asked you—
snow falling

Credits: "forest pool" - Planet 186; "touching you" - Lull Before Dark (Brooks Books, 2005); "eating in silence" - Modern Haiku 35.2 (2004); "winter chill" - Lull Before Dark (Brooks Books, 2005); "closing the lid" - Frogpond 33.2 (2010); "all those things" - Lull Before Dark (Brooks Books, 2005).