Carolyn Smart

csmart CAROLYN SMART was born in England in 1952 and moved to Canada with her parents and sister in 1958. She has since lived in Ottawa, Toronto, and Winnipeg, and moved to the country north of Kingston in 1983. Since 1985, she has lived on a farm between Sydenham and Harrowsmith, Ontario. She and her husband Kenneth have two children: Nick (19) and Dan (14).

Carolyn’s collections of poetry have included: Swimmers in Oblivion (1981), Power Sources (1982), Stoning the Moon (1986), and The Way to Come Home (1992). Her memoir, At the End of the Day, was published in 2001.

Her non-fiction essays have appeared in Writing the New South Africa, Fireweed, Quarry, and Best Canadian Essays1989. She was the winner of the CBC Literary Contest in 1993 for a non-fiction essay entitled “A Careful Man” and was finalist for the National Magazine Awards (poetry category) in 1994. She has worked as an editor at Doubleday Canada and Macmillan’s, been a member of the Editorial Collective of Fireweed, A Feminist Quarterly, edited the Manitoba Budget Address in 1974 and 1975, sold women’s clothes in the Eaton’s Centre and at Harrods, reviewed poetry for magazines and newspapers across Canada, and worked as a freelance editor. Since 1989 she has taught Creative Writing at Queen’s University. In 1993 she wrote the lyrics to “Requiem,” a musical work by Eleanor Daley. On the Women’s Television Network she appeared as a featured poet in “Writing on the Wall” (1995).

She is currently writing poems under the working title Unease and has just completed a novel, entitled Come Back.