My good friend Caroline Gilfillan, who has died aged 71, was a multitalented musician, novelist and poet with a vibrant and adventurous spirit.
Her poems gained awards, together with a Yeovil literary prize in 2019. She printed 4 collections, together with Pepys in 2012 and Sure in 2010, which gained greatest poetry ebook within the East Anglian ebook awards that 12 months.
Within the mid-Seventies, dwelling in east London, Caroline and 4 mates co-founded the trailblazing all-female band the Stepney Sisters, writing and performing authentic songs that tackled feminist struggles and sexism. Additionally they supported native Bangladeshi households. In later life, Caroline volunteered in India, travelling every winter from 2016 to 2019 to show youngsters at a faculty in Kochi, Kerala.
The Stepney Sisters stayed collectively for 18 months, enjoying 50 gigs and showing on the quilt of Spare Rib journal. Caroline continued to jot down songs and carry out with musicians all through her life, within the totally different locations she lived; she fashioned the a cappella group Crikey Aphrodite in Lancaster, and the bands Calamity in Norfolk and the Ponytails and Excessive Jinx in London.
Born in Worthing, West Sussex, she was the daughter of Marjorie (nee Stephens) and Robert Gilfillan, an engineer. After leaving Worthing grammar college for ladies she spent a interval in Paris as an au pair. She studied English at York College after which moved to London, the place she took publishing and educating jobs to help herself whereas performing in bands and writing.
In her 40s, by then working in NHS administration, she left her well-paid job and moved to Lancaster, and took an MA in inventive writing at Lancaster College. In 2004 she moved to Fakenham in Norfolk, the place she and I met. She taught on the College of East Anglia and for the Open College, and ran her personal inventive writing workshops.
Her poems had been included in lots of anthologies, and she or he was a winner of a Channel 4 writing competitionwith The Colonel, a 15-minute drama about torture in Chile within the 70s.
In 2018 she established her personal publishing firm, Cowslip Press, publishing two crime novels set in north Norfolk. Her most up-to-date publication, a poetry assortment in collaboration with the photographer Andrew Scott entitled Hail Sisters of the Revolution (2022), celebrates her early experiences with the Stepney Sisters (“beer swillers, girls’s libbers/bolshie Sheilas”). The ebook captures the spirit of east London within the 70s and was beneficial by the Poetry Society as a ebook of the 12 months in 2022.
Recognized with most cancers in 2020, Caroline confronted her sickness courageously. She liked nature and targeted on gratitude and positivity. She continued to run, and to take part in inventive writing workshops and readings, having fun with this 12 months’s Edinburgh pageant.
She is survived by her brother, Christian, her nephew Etienne, her niece Alex and great-nieces Raphaelle and Elise.
