"The Cult of the Eye" on the radio

This poem, once the title poem for my first collection, starts off a little overimpassioned in my reading here on WGLT's programme, Poetry Radio, but that's part of the character--and mine, admittedly. It originally aired in my hometown of Normal, Illinois on 8 February.

Book blurbs

Lately I've been thinking a lot about blurbs as I've collected a couple for my next book of poems and advised a friend on obtaining some for his. In seeking blurbs, I've encountered unexpected (while hoped for) generosity and earnestness. For my pamphlet/chapbook Subterfuge for the Unrequitable (Potes & Poets, 1998), I approached via email two poets I'd never met or had previous contact with, Cole Swensen and Ron Silliman. I'd admired Swensen's work for years and was delighted when she provided a lovely blurb. With Silliman, I only had the virtue, by way of introduction, of bringing out the pamphlet with a publisher who had also produced some of his own works (and he's had quite a few publishers over the years), and yet he too kindly gave me a blurb for my pamphlet. 

The blurbs did more than provide the pamphlet with something to put on the back cover and perhaps persuade a few people to buy it. They heartened me greatly. Indeed, to this day rereading their remarks encourages me. 

I had a similar experience with my first full collection, The Tethers (Seren, 2009), approaching Robert Crawford, whom I'd only met briefly at a conference, and Rosanna Warren, whom I'd never met but whose work had influenced my aesthetic since I was introduced as an undergrad to her work.

I understand some poets are bombarded by so many requests for blurbs that they have had to set down rules: they don't do blurbs for students or they only do blurbs for students; they only do them for people they know personally; etc. I feel grateful to all those poets who make time to comment conscientiously on a younger or less established poet's work and thus help it find a readership. My thanks go out to them all.

"The Review" is poem of the week in The Times Literary Supplement

You can read Andrew McCulloch's commentary and the poem here.

Another (praiseful) review of The Tethers

The current PN Review includes Alison Brackenbury's review of The Tethers (over two years after the book's publication, but hey, I'm not complaining). Here are some highlights: "The Tethers reveals Carrie Etter as a poetic chameleon, with a colour to dazzle every reader. [...] This is beautifully done. The Tethers is rich in technical variety. [...] Etter’s endings are persistently superb, including wicked collage, ‘you are saved, I tell you, you are saved’, and passionate entreaty, ‘Tell me which. Tell me both.’" See the magazine to read the whole.

On Verse Daily

I'm happy to say that my poem, "The Trapeze Artist's Dear John Letter," from The Tethers, is today's poem on Verse Daily.

2010

As I approach every birthday and New Year's Eve, I find myself reckoning the last year. Here's 2010 (well, the expurgated version for public consumption....):

This is the year I won the London Festival Fringe New Poetry Award for my first book, The Tethers (Seren, 2009). I cannot explain why it has meant so much to me, but it has given me greater confidence (don't let the American exterior fool you).

This is the year that two of my nieces, Katelyn Etter and Josslyn Casperson, were lost to me. Their mothers, my sisters, had signed over their rights to the state on account of the fierce intimidation and pressurizing they received from state representatives (following my sisters' struggles with drug addiction), and their other parents decided to cut off contact with the entire Etter family, both around early autumn. I long to hear from my nieces but have no expectations.

This is the year the anthology I began working on in August 2007 was published by Shearsman Books, Infinite Difference: Other Poetries by UK Women Poets, and widely reviewed as well as commented on in the Times Literary Supplement (3 times!) and on the London Review of Books blog. I've been pleasantly surprised by the number of truly positive reviews and only rarely disappointed by small-mindedness, when I thought the proportions would be reversed. Thanks again to all the contributors for their good work.

This is my first whole year without my father, but the lawsuit for medical malpractice against BroMenn Hospital drags on. I long for its settlement for the closure it will bring for my mother most of all, not to mention reimbursement for huge medical bills.

This is the year I was creatively devoted to my second book manuscript, Divining for Starters. After much work, feedback, and more work, I'm heartened by the result.

This is the year I had laser eye surgery. I began wearing contacts at the age of 15 and had to switch to glasses at 35 when my eyes would no longer tolerate the contacts. I've only had this new vision a matter of days, but I'm awed to see unaided for the first time in 26 years. It's--sorry, it's the right word--awesome!

Tony Williams on The Tethers,

in his blog post dated yesterday, makes some interesting and insightful remarks.

Tonight on Resonance 104.4 FM

I'll be on The London Fringe Show at 10 p.m. in honour of my winning the London Festival Fringe New Poetry Award for The Tethers. I'll be reading a few poems as well as answering questions about the prize (presumably). You can listen online via Resonance's website.

The Tethers recommended

In Inpress's September newsletter, Julia Copus recommends The Tethers alongside Catherine Smith's The Butcher's Hands, Carol Ann Duffy's Mean Time, and Selima Hill's Gloria: Selected Poems. Hurrah!

"The Separation" on Poetry Radio

You can listen to it here.

Describing and classifying poetry

I've noticed that a couple commentators on The Tethers, knowing of my "experimental work," seem to struggle with TT's "mainstream" qualities, but where they see a vast difference between the two areas, I see continuities, a spectrum. Asked by an interviewer about the difference between his poetry and prose, Gary Snyder responded, "I don't really think of them as different so much--I adopt whatever structure seems to be necessary to the communication in mind." I feel much the same way. Just as a poet may choose among such forms as the sestina, the sonnet, etc. in composing a poem, I think about modes of expression, degrees of tension or fragmentation, lines versus prose, etc. and may in one day write poems that would be classified as "mainstream" and "experimental." Is such an approach so hard to comprehend? Is it so unusual?

The Tethers awarded London Festival Fringe New Poetry Award 2010

Last night at the Pizza Express Soho's Jazz Cafe, I was awarded the London Festival Fringe New Poetry Award for The Tethers. Judge Daljit Nagra's description of the book could not have been more appreciative--it nearly made me cry. I'll receive the £2500 cheque at another awards ceremony at the Waldorf Hilton in London on the 26th.

My thanks to all the judges and to my fellow shortlisted poets, the quality of whose work made the prize that much more dear.

Bath Life

Today's issue of Bath Life includes a short article about me and the shortlisting of The Tethers for the London Festival Fringe New Poetry Award.

"Poetry for non-poets: Carrie Etter, The Tethers"--a new review

A zestful, frank, and appreciative review of The Tethers appeared Wednesday on the heretofore unknown to me blog, Semipop Life by Brad Luen of Berkeley, California. It's also the first one I've seen using obscenity. I tried to choose a favourite passage as a sample here, but I couldn't decide; you're just going to have to read it for yourself. It's great fun.

"The Colony of Us" on WGLT's Poetry Radio

My reading of "The Colony of Us" from The Tethers aired yesterday on WGLT's Poetry Radio and can be heard streaming here.

Another appreciative review of The Tethers in New Welsh Review

When a review of The Tethers shows close reading and subsequent understanding, I feel heartened and encouraged. Sarah Wardle's review in the summer issue of New Welsh Review is such a one (others include Paul Batchelor in The Times, Richard Gwyn in Poetry Wales, and Ben Wilkinson in the TLS). I'll quote the last few paragraphs here and refer you to the magazine for the complete article.

"In places the word choice is archaic: vocabulary includes ‘cherish’, ‘yearn’, ‘forebore’ and ‘nay’; but her fondness for such language fits with her at times Shakespearian inflexion. She deploys elevated diction, as in ‘asseverated your sincerity without reserve’, and in places uses academic discourse to interesting effect: ‘There is a London winter hermeneutic at work/ well into April’. In general, her raised diction and meditative cadence succeed in capturing the register and rhythm of the mind’s pensive voice, as at the close of ‘The Honeymoon of Our Attraction’: ‘Of the wave’s surge I know only/ I stand soddened.’

"Elsewhere, she can write with startling clarity and imagery, as in ‘Biopsy’: ‘This is my body. This is my heart,/ standing aside like a child at the zoo’; and in the fine lines which close the collection from ‘The World at Dusk’: ‘When at last I walked to the postbox, afternoon/ was everywhere. I had decades to live’.

"This book will be enjoyed by a readership that is both general and academic, and on either side of the Atlantic. Carrie Etter’s poetry stems from strong geographical roots and, unlike some contemporary poets, she shows an awareness of her literary heritage. Dedicated to her late father, The Tethers is a fine tribute and promising debut, filled with intelligent observation and written with precision."

The Tethers shortlisted for London Festival Fringe New Poetry Award

The Tethers appears on a long shortlist for the just-begun London Festival Fringe New Poetry Award. Further details are available here. The winner will be announced in August.

The Tethers reviewed in today's TLS

"Figurative, metaphysical, rich in classical allusion, the poems in Carrie Etter's distinctive debut collection (many of which first appeared in the TLS) are highly lyrical, but unlike some of her contemporaries, she avoids the anecdotal in favour of the abstract, often adopting philosophical modes of inquiry. The 'tethers' of the title are those we forge between our minds and physical matter, particularly the body: from the heart in 'Biopsy' 'standing aside like a child in the zoo' to Fanny Brawne's engagement ring from Keats which she wore until her death: 'a promise/ unfulfilled' figured as 'the past's persisting bruise'. But the inventive image making that suffuses Etter's writing is nonetheless accompanied by a perceptive clarity of thought, threaded through a concise, fluid style capable of addressing a range of subjects while still sounding wholly individual."

That's the opening paragraph, written by poet-critic Ben Wilkinson. For the rest, see the journal; in two weeks it should be in TLS's online archives.

New (happy) reviews of The Tethers

Two positive and thoughtful reviews of The Tethers have appeared, in The North (written by Carole Bromley) and Poetry Wales (written by Richard Gwyn). While the entire reviews are only available in print, brief excerpts appear on my permanent page for The Tethers.

Goodbye, 2009

My parents, Henry and Bernadine Etter, in 2006

It was the year my first book of poetry was published and the year my father died tragically, in a horrific episode of malpractice. It was a year of terrible grief and loneliness, a year of kind friends and small pleasures. I am relieved to see it past.