Carolyn has won many literary competition prizes and commendations for her poetry for adults, which includes free verse, tradition fixed forms, Australian bush verse, haiku, haiku sequences, and tanka.

Her poems for adults have been featured in a wide variety of publications including:

Grieve – Stories and Poems of Grief and Loss, Volume 10, 2022
Eucalypt: a Tanka Journal Issue 32, 2022 (Edited by Julie Thorndyke)
Windfall Australian Haiku Issue 9, 2021 (Edited by Beverley George)
Eucalypt: a Tanka Journal Issue 31, 2021 (Edited by Julie Thorndyke)
Eucalypt:  a Tanka Journal Issue 29, 2020 (Edited by Julie Thorndyke)
Eucalypt:  a Tanka Journal Issues 26 & 27, 2019 (Edited by Julie Thorndyke)
Eucalypt:  a Tanka Journal Issue 24, 2018 (Edited by Julie Thorndyke)
Windfall Australian Haiku Issue 6, 2018 (Blue Giraffe Press – edited by Beverley George)
Eucalypt:  a Tanka Journal Issues 22 & 23, 2017 (Edited by Julie Thorndyke)
Windfall Australian Haiku Issue 5, 2017 (Blue Giraffe Press – edited by Beverley George)
A Temple Bell Sounds: 108 tanka from the twenty-one issues of Eucalypt: a tanka journal (edited by Beverley George), 2017
Society of Women Writers’ INK3 anthology of prize-winning writing (edited by Susan Steggall), 2016
Windfall Australian Haiku Issue 3, 2015 (Blue Giraffe Press – edited by Beverley George)
Take Five Best Contemporary Tanka – Volume 4 – 2012
Tanka Huddle (Edited by Julie Thorndyke, 2011)
Award Winning Australian Writing 2010
Take Five Best Contemporary Tanka – Volume 2 – 2009
Kokako 10 (edited by Patricia Prime & Joanna Preston) 2009
Eucalypt: a tanka journal – Issues 1, 2, 5 & 7 (edited by Beverley George)
The Japan Tanka Poets’ Society ‘Tanka in English’ 2009
Tea Towel Tanka (Edited by Beverley George)
Yellow Moon Magazine – Issues from 1997–2006 (Edited by Pat Kelsall/Beverley George)
Light Falling Softly: an anthology of odes (Edited by Beverley George)
Reflections from the Moon: an anthology of Sonnets (Edited by Beverley George)
Whispers from the Moon: an anthology of Sonnets (Edited by Beverley George)
Sonnets & Sestinas: a Yellow Moon anthology (Edited by Beverley George)
Chasing Butterflies (compiled and edited by Ken Freeman)
A Feast of Poetry, 2009
The Australian Women’s Weekly
The Australian Bush Poets Awards CD (Sony Music), 2001
A Hundred Years in the Bush (Outback Writers Centre, Dubbo), 2001
The Bronze Swagman Book of Bush Verse, 1999

Much of Carolyn’s bush verse is humorous, and her cheeky poem ‘The Ballad of Rosie McGreer’ was published in the Australian Women’s Weekly after coming runner up in the 2001 Asthma NSW Bush Poets Awards.  Carolyn’s recitation of her poem was subsequently recorded on ‘The Australian Bush Poets Awards 2001’ CD by Sony Music.  She was also runner up with a recitation of it in the 2005 Henry Lawson Society’s 2005 Leonard Teale Memorial Performance Poetry competition held in Gulgong.

In 2009 she was awarded NSW Open Bush Poetry Champion (written section) and First Place, Third and Highly Commended in the Open Humorous (written section) in the Hunter Bush Poets competition.  In the same year, she received a Highly Commended and two Commended certificates in the Upper Lachlan Bush Poets’ ‘Wool Wagon Awards’.

She has also won multiple prizes in the Gilgandra ‘Coo-ee’ Festival poetry competitions, and has been Highly Commended or Commended in the ABPA Qld State Championships, the Tamworth ‘Blackened Billy’ Verse Competition, Nandewar Poetry Competitions, Outback Australia Literary Competition, and Rolf Boldrewood Literary Awards.

Her poem ‘Canary Song’ won Second Prize in National Dame Mary Gilmore Poetry Award 2015 and her poem ‘The Gift’ was awarded the ‘Mindframe’ award in the 2002 Grieve Awards.