Carol Thistlethwaite, a learning support tutor and creative writing tutor for the past five years at Lancashire College, started writing poems for a dissertation she was doing for an MA and has never looked back.

The trigger started after she began teacher training studies at Edge Hill College just months before her 40th birthday.

The mother of two sons, from Euxton, says she has always enjoyed words and writing.

Now Carol, who is chairman of the Chorley and District Writing Circle, is to launch her new book called 'From The Field Book' at a meeting of the Writing Circle at Lancashire College on Tuesday, March 25 from 7.30pm to 9pm.

"How did it start?," Carol mused. "At the same time I was at Edge Hill College, I was working for the RSPB in Lytham St Annes and I used to take school parties mud dipping.

"I just asked how do people identify birds when they are so far away, and was told you learn the different characteristics of each bird and the way it behaves.

"At the same time I had decided to do a collection of poems for my dissertation. The poems are very much about how I have learned about bird species."

At the same time, Carol was sending out her work online and she was commissioned to write her first book of poems by BeWrite - 'From The Field Book' is the resultant collection of poems written over four or five years.

Her book has been illustrated by Tom Adamson, formerly of Chorley, and now living in Lostock Hall.

Although this is her first book of poems, Carol has had two books published which she wrote as a learning support tutor.

Carol's book will be available online from www.be-write.com from March 20 and 21 which coincides with Earth Day and the first day of spring.

She will be reading from her collection at the launch on March 25 and signed copies of her book will be available there priced £4.99 (£5.99 including postage and packing).

Other local writers launching books on March 25 at Lancashire College are Alec Price with 'Trogglybogs of Brinscall Moor', Peter Bird of Coppull with 'GSOH', and Peter Cropper of Horwich with the biography 'From Great Broughton to Great Britain'.