About Carole

Carole Bromley was born in Middlesbrough and now lives in York. She is married with four children and thirteen grandchildren.

Her poems have been widely published in magazines including Poetry Review, Poetry News, The North, Magma, Mslexia, The Rialto, Strix, Coast to Coast to Coast and Butcher’s Dog and she has twice been a winner in the Poetry Business Book and Pamphlet Competition. She has two pamphlets, Unscheduled Halt (2004) and Skylight (2009) and three collections, A Guided Tour of the Ice House (2011), The Stonegate Devil (2015) and Blast Off (2017) with Smith/Doorstop, The Peregrine Falcons of York Minster (2020) with Valley Press and Sodium 136 (2019) with Calder Valley. A new collection aimed at visitors to York of all ages will be published in August 2026. The poems in Ghosts and Ginnels (Ings Press) were written for children though adults also enjoy them!

Individual poems have won a number of first prizes, including the 2022 Caterpillar Prize. Carole is a past winner of The Bridport, the Yorkshire Open, Torbay, Poetry Space and the Bronte Society Literary Prize. In 2019 she was awarded the Hamish Canham Prize by the Poetry Society. She has been placed in the following competitions: Hippocrates, Verve, Keats Shelley, Torriano, Manchester Cathedral, Elmet, Ilkley, Barnet, Northampton, Mslexia, Big Issue in the North, Grey Hen, Poetry on the Lake, Plough, Housman Society, Whiteadder Press, Staple, BT Stay in Touch, Guardian Text Message Poems, Ware, New Forest, Lancaster Litfest, Arvon, Thomas Hardy Society, Manchester Writing for Children Award and Bronte Society.

Carole was an Arvon/Jerwood mentee in 2010. She has performed at the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival and run workshops at Aldeburgh and at the Bridlington, Ripon and York Poetry Festivals. She has performed her children’s poems at the Imagine Festival at the Royal Festival Hall and has run children’s workshops in local schools and York libraries. With her new book she will be leading poetic tours of York’s hidden corners for the Poetry Pharmacy.

She has degrees from the Universities of Reading, London and York and an MPhil in Writing from Glamorgan. For many years an English teacher in her home-town of York, she taught Creative Writing at York University’s Centre for Lifelong Learning for fifteen years. She now teaches online courses for The Writing School Online on writing poems for children.

Carole is also the Poetry Society’s stanza rep for York and a large group of poets from a wide area meet at her home every month to share their work. She has taught for Arvon and Garsdale, runs poetry surgeries for The Poetry Society and is a mentor with The Poetry School. She is available for readings and workshops in schools and at festivals.