- Tikki Tikki Man £8.99 UK pp (£9.99 elsewhere)
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Release date: January 2012
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Tikki Tikki Man is Caroline Carver’s 4th collection and the first to be published by Ward Wood. It tells the story of how two children deal with the after-effects of child abuse, as their lives take them from Jamaica to Paris, to Scotland and eventually the Canadian wilderness.
- being Bluebeard
- means submarines doors clanging shut
- sonic booms furtive night messengers
- means sealing of fire water wind
- reduction by earth and its dark shovels
- watch out man I see you slipping in and out
- of corridors look like rats got your face
'The vivid landscapes, real and imaginary, that these poems economically evoke, are never simply an exotic backdrop. Rather, their beauty and their ambiguities weave the reader into an unsettling, unsentimental vision of how childhood can be damaged, exiled from itself and finally, cautiously, returned to its place in the world. This is difficult material, delicately done, all the more powerful for its sure and subtle touch.'
Philip Gross
'The poetry of Caroline Carver's Tikki Tikki Man is spacious and at home in many landscapes. Its content is troubling, its beauty redemptive. It leaves the reader with a sense of the world as a larger, and warmer, place.'Alison Brackenbury
'… a stunning collection. I completely lost myself in the world you have created.'
Dr Catherine Walters, Lecturer in Applied Linguistics, Oxford University
'…We walk the world with this poet through the immediacy, wit and assurance of her language…'
Penny Shuttle, re Caroline’s last book, Three Hares, published by Oversteps
'Caroline Carver has the gift of transforming real and imagined experience, from all parts of the world, into a rich, coherent poetic mythology. She is a subtle and always-seeking alchemist.'
DM Thomas
Caroline began writing poetry in the mid-1990s, and won the National Poetry Prize with a poem about killing a shark in 1998. Since then she has won or been placed in many competitions, winning the prestigious Silver Wyvern Award from Poetry-on-the-Lake in Orta, Italy and the first Guernsey Poems On the Buses competition. She was Commended in the 2010 National Poetry competition.
Caroline Carver was born in England, brought up in Bermuda and Jamaica, finished her education in England, Switzerland and France, and then emigrated to Canada for 30 years. Since she returned to England she’s travelled widely with her poetry, and was part of a reading tour of Ontario and New York/New England three years ago, in company with poets Penelope Shuttle and Victoria Field. She’s a Hawthornden Fellow, resident poet at Trebah Gardens and very active in poetry affairs in Cornwall.