Poetry Books
New Title!
A signed copy of "Mimosas at Sunset,"
published by MoonPath Press
is now available from the author ($20 includes postage)
Available through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and selected bookstores in February
*
Please contact me at sharonmcarter.com@gmail.com (contact tab)
to obtain copies of all books:
"Quiver" ($15 inc. postage)
or
"EKPHRASTIC PASTICHE"
Eighteen, 8 X 10 full color abstracted marine drawings, with 35 poems ($25)
BOOK REVIEWS
Book epigraph "QUIVER", by Gerard De Nerval: "Look around you, everything quivers with being."
Sharon Carter’s poems reveal an astonishing sensibility, a voice that probes the intimate life of the body — personal, cultural, history itself — with the exactness of a scalpel. The heart stutters on, she tells us, and she would know. As a physician, she became attuned to the crack and groan of the human body: illness and death rising like birdsong from the throat; women in labor; fissures on an iced-over lake like the blight of a mammogram. Her meditations are nuanced, droll, clear sighted; alert to the marvels of the earth and its ruin; layered with bravado, bees, and longing. Women do this, she affirms: deliver babies, make poems, resurrect the dead. I find myself standing back with admiration. “May light from the farthest galaxy/arrive before too long,” she writes. Amen. —KATHRYN HUNT, author of a "Long Way Through Ruin" and "Seed Wheel"
These spiky but tender poems grow from a complex root system slowly exposed as we read them. Describing the terror of a difficult childbirth, or commenting on a corrupt culture--tell me, when has money made anyone honest? -Carter uses myth and emotion to wrap us in a vine of beauty, memory, and brutal decay. Common flowers and vegetation become metaphors for larger concerns and expand our world exponentially. -GAYLE KAUNE, author of "All the Birds Awake" and "Noise from Stars"
About
I grew up in a previously flourishing Lancashire seaside resort. I worked various part time jobs from age fourteen, the least popular being a chamber maid. Art and chemistry were my favorite subjects at high school. Benefitting from free British education I studied medical sciences, attending Cambridge University.
I immigrated to the U.S. in the late 1970's moving to Washington state to raise a family. I decided to stay. I've worked for non-profits during my career and recently retired from a part-time volunteer medical position.
I traveled extensively on a shoe-string budget while in college, then overland for six months to Afghanistan, Iran, India, Nepal in my late twenties. A staffing post in 2005 on the Semester at Sea resulted in circumnavigating the earth. I revisited several countries and witnessed the consequences of population growth, wars, and pollution.
The Hedgebrook Foundation and Jackstraw Writers program generously provided valuable support during my early writing career. My visual art and poetry have been accepted in many journals, including the Raven Chronicles award winning anthology: Take a Stand: Art Against Hate, Strange Fruit, One Art, Pontoon, Poetry on the Buses, Amsterdam Quarterly, Ars Medica, One Art, Terra Nova, Heliotrope, Wild Roof Journal and The Madrona Project, volumes 3 and 7.
My poetry book's epigraph advises: Look around you, everything you see quivers with being.
POEMS
1. WHEREVER I AM, THERE YOU ARE
Ancient astronomers once thought
Earth center of our universe.
I know now this is untrue—
Mount Tahoma is the constant
heart, suspended
between Heaven and Earth.
When midnight comes, pearl fishers
trawl its black canopy; the moon
concealed in a cratered cloak
studies us with a silver eye.
_____________________________________
2. BEDDING PLANES, ZION CANYON
Weathered russet, charcoal and bone-
white streaks bleed across the fractured planes
of wind-sculpted rock. Sediments contain
a million years of memory, each stone
pressed against another, like two lovers thrown
together. In the struggle to retain
separate lives, our boundaries are much the same-
in truth we seldom stand alone.
We’ve learned to lean a little for support-
the faults and folds of ingrained habits mean
our edges sometimes aren’t a perfect fit.
Though years of wind and rain distort
the matrix of our lives, the mortar in between
the crack is where our strength exists.
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READINGS
Three Readers with Q and A. Including T. Clear and Ingrid Wendt. Register at MoonPath Press.
Editor Susan Rich, Pamela Moore Dionne and I will read a small selection from the "Birdbrains" anthology, "A Lyrical Guide to Washington State Birds," during the writer's open mike gathering, "Kaleidoscope," run by Anna and Peter Quinn. (No registration required, only limited by fire regulations!)
Reading with Pamela Moore Dionne. Should be a great evening!
Join us for a 7 person online reading: all alumni of the Jackstraw Reading series who have had collections published in the last two years. Also including: Jamaica Baldwin, Larry Crist, Danielle Bero, Jory Mickelson, Emily Perez and Lana Hechtman Ayers
I'll be reading on August 20th with Sheila Bender and Samantha Della-DeVoney. See details for the complete series!! :https://www.wilderbeefarm.com/poetryseries
Contact
- Olympic Peninsula, Washington, United States
If you need to contact me please fill out the adjacent form and I'll do my best to be prompt.