The Poet
Carolyn Long (aka Afiya M Frimpoma)was born in Ghana, West Africa in 1962. She is half Ashanti, and half Irish-Canadian. In 1994 she gained a B.Sc. (Hons) in Neuroscience at UCL and in 1996, she completed a PGCE (Primary) course at the Institute of Education, WC1. She completed an initial teacher training in science education (secondary) in 2001 and has been teaching science at a girls school in South East London.
Carolyn has always had a passion for poetry, not only to gain access to rich language, deep feeling and wit but to acquire wisdom along the way. So far, the poems she's written include rhyme, free verse, sonnets and haiku. However, the poet fully admits that the only genre she rarely finds appealing is “free verse”. When asked why she has written many free verses when she didn't like the genre, she replied, “It was the mature thing to do”.
The poet lives with her husband, two children and seven gold fish in the South East end of London. She dabbles in songwriting, silk-painting, oil paintings, African dance and music composition. Her favourite poets include Keats, Kipling, Coleridge and Cowper.
A personal project that means a great deal to the poet, is her use lyrics of classic poetry in popular songs to offer children of today the rich language of the past in a very accessible and fun way. She also uses popular tunes to create science songs for her students to use as an aide memoir in science lessons.