Stained

May 29, 2023

I am happy to share that my poem “Grandmother’s Marital Bed” was selected to be included in a new anthology from Querencia Press, but more importantly I am thrilled that 25% of proceeds are being donated to Days for Girls, which is an international organization to help girls around the world have access to menstrual care and education.

According to Days for Girls, more than 500 million women and girls do not have the supplies they require to manage their periods, often resulting in lost days at school, work, or to attend to familial responsibilities.

There are so many ways artists can help the world. Consider pre-ordering this poetry anthology if you would like to support menstrual poverty across the globe. Buy it here: Stained.

Yours in poetry,

Carey

Upcoming Reading!!

May 5, 2023

I will be reading next week at Shelton Timberland Library with poet friends Cathy Warner, Gary E. Bullock, and Dan Coffman (and maybe a few other Washington poets if it works out!). Cathy Warner and I have been friends since 2012 when we both found ourselves new to Bainbridge Island. While she and I have both moved about since then, our poetry friendship has stayed intact. Gary and Dan are new poetry friends who I met in a workshop class with poet Gary Copeland Lilley and whom I have not met in person due to COVID, but will now be able to meet in person! It is not hyperbole to say all my poet friends and connections are what got me through those long three years of isolation. Come and hear us read. Come celebrate our connection to poetry and each other.

Yours in poetry,

Carey

Extinction Dreams

April 10, 2023

I am happy to share that my poem “Extinction Dreams After Beachie Creek Fire” was selected by Judge Kelli Russell Agodon as the third place winner in the Oregon Poetry Association’s 2023 Spring Contest. I have admired Kelli’s poetry for some time and to be chosen by her in a blind reading is an honor. Here is what she has to say.

“Extinction Dreams After Beachie Creek Fire” is a smart and witty poem that lured me in with a dream of Brad Pitt as a “smoky kisser” only to surprise when I realized I was in a poem about the climate crisis. This is [a] long-armed poem that brings in dead fathers and pet beagles all while still addressing a larger issue—the speaker unsure whether they can open their windows due to smoke—this poem was a reminder of how we are living our lives as normal as we can through environmental collapse but entirely through imagery and even gratitude that “this morning your/barn still stands.” I was impressed with the poet’s ability to use pop culture and whimsy as a doorway to deeper and important discussions about the environment.   

You can read my poem and the other winners of this contest here.

Yours in poetry,

Carey

Poets Support Ukraine

January 2, 2023

I am honored to be one of 47 poets in this anthology to raise funds for Ukrainian Refugees. My poem title was also used as the anthology title. The anthology is published by Black Spring Press Group out of Westminster, London. 100% of the sales profits will go to the Sanctuary Foundation which is a charity that helps Ukrainian people to safety and homes in the UK.

If you would like to help refugees from Ukraine who are victims of this terrible war, please consider buying this anthology (and maybe another for a friend).

Yours in poetry,

Carey

Peace be with Us

December 23, 2022

Dear Loves,

Today in Portland we are hunkered down with temperatures in the 20’s, sleet on the ground and freezing rain in the forecast. We are fortunate. We have food in the cupboards, the electricity is still on, and all my family are safe, unlike so many around the world, especially in Ukraine.

May you use this season to reflect on all you have and be grateful for it. May you find it in your heart this season to help others who are less fortunate. May you appreciate the fleeting moment we exist and make the time you inhabit this earth matter.

And find joy. In the birds at the feeder, in the neighbor’s soup, in a child’s laugh, in a beloved’s voice, in the music we make and the poems we write.

My wish for each of us is to create a world filled with peace, love, kindness, good health. Be the light someone can find in the darkness.

Yours in poetry,

Carey

Cirque Reading

November 20, 2022

I am looking forward to participating in the first poetry contest held by Cirque. Feel free to Zoom with us at 7:00 pm, Pacific Time, on November 22 and listen to poets read their winning poems. In addition to the winners, other poets were selected from the submissions to be published in the next issue of Cirque and will also be reading. I will be part of that latter group and will read two or three poems. If you aren’t too swamped with holiday plans, I hope you can make it.

Yours in poetry,

Carey

EARTHWORK

September 8, 2022

Poet Kristin Berger from Portland, Oregon, has recently released a new book of poems titled “EARTHWORK”, that I highly recommend. Berger is a masterful poet who writes with equal parts love and grief about changing landscapes—both literal and familial, and in doing so, gives us, her readers, a hand-hold to scramble our way to hope and keep us on the span when the water goes down.

Cover Art: Genevieve Entezari

Again, this is a beautiful collection, and you can get a copy for yourself here: The Poetry Box, Portland, Oregon.

Yours in poetry,

Carey

Land of the Free and Dead

June 6, 2022

I wrote this poem in 2015. Seven years later the problem of children being killed by guns in America has only escalated. How much mental illness in fact begins with living in a country where it does not feel safe to go to the grocery store, first grade, 3rd grade, 4th grade, high school, college, a movie, a doctor’s office, your place of employment, a concert?

As poets we write about what we feel and witness. As poets we record-keep the actions of a culture. As poets we express in a few words the horror and beauty of this world. May the horror move you to action. May you find a way to preserve the beauty of this world, so that our children have the chance to bear witness to it.

Yours in poetry,

Carey

Cirque in Portland!

June 1, 2022

If you like poetry and haven’t been to a reading in person for awhile, join us at Kennedy School McMenamins on June 4th – 7:00 PM. Each reader will have about five minutes to showcase their work and celebrate publication in Cirque. Hope to see a few of you.

Yours in poetry,

Carey

Cirque Reads!

May 11, 2022

Hope to see some of you at this Zoom reading of both poetry and prose. I will be reading 5 minutes worth of poems, so pop in for a few minutes or stay and listen to the line-up!

Yours in poetry,

Carey

Full Circle

April 27, 2022

Last weekend I had the great joy to read my poem at the Hoffman Center for the Arts in Manzanita, Oregon, which is just up the road from where I learned to read and write at Garibaldi Grade School. To feel the trajectory of my writing come back to where it started 60 years ago was a homecoming of sorts, and the loss I felt as a child leaving the North Coast was replaced with the understanding that this place had never left me.

Judge Lana Ayers who selected my poem for the 2022 Neahkahnie Mountain Poetry Prize had this to say about “Birthday Fires”.

“Birthday Fires is a marvel of imagery and complexity in 9 couplets. The fires are birth, creativity, life. The poem reminds us that even as hardships and sorrows sap joy, we can still celebrate and make our own light, as in the final captivating image of the poem.”

Yours in poetry,

Carey

Neahkahnie Mountain Poetry Prize

February 15, 2022

I am thrilled to have had my poem “Birthday Fires” chosen as the winner of the 2022 Neahkahnie Mountain Poetry Prize. This is an annual contest held by the Hoffman Center for the Arts in Manzanita, Oregon, with this year’s judge being Lana Hechtman Ayers.

This poem began after I read the line in a poem from Henri Cole: “I came from a place with a hole in it”. As poems are wont to do, it found its own story to tell, its own feelings to express.

Having learned to read and write at Garibaldi Grade School, I am thrilled my words have returned full circle to this part of the Northern Oregon Coast. I have fond memories of living at the Coast Guard Station in Garibaldi, learning to swim at the Nehalem pool, and having the ability to roam this small town with the freedom of an earlier era.

Garibaldi, Oregon – View from my childhood bedroom window.
Garibaldi, Oregon – Childhood home .

You can check out my poem and the 2nd and 3rd place winners here: Hoffman Center for the Arts.

Again, I am humbled and honored to have been chosen for this prize.

Yours in poetry,

Carey

SHARK REEF

January 16, 2022

I am honored to have my poem “Early Seral Stage” published in Shark Reef.

Shark Reef is one of my favorite regional journals and I hope you take
time to read this winter issue.

Yours in poetry,

Carey

North Coast Squid

September 29, 2021

I am honored to have my poem “A Woman on 22nd and Killingsworth” published in the 8th edition of the North Coast Squid.

Please check out the link above for where to purchase this journal doing great work on the north Oregon coast. Isn’t the cover just lovely? I can’t wait to settle down with my morning coffee and check it out.

I have fond memories of my time as a child living on the north Oregon coast at the Tillamook Bay Coast Guard Station where my father was Chief. I learned to swim at the Nehalem Pool, had my tonsils and adenoids taken out in Wheeler, met my first best friend Marla, in Mrs. Jones first grade class at Garibaldi Grade School.

I can still remember my father pulling our car onto Highway 101 and heading south after yet another Coast Guard transfer. As I looked back at the base, and then out to the boathouse, I began to cry. It was the first time I had a feeling that I would only understand later. How a heart can attach to place.

To come back to this place through my words is both an honor and a reminder that we can go home, because any home we have been loved in, embeds itself into the core of our being.

Yours in poetry,

Carey

Concordia Neighborhood #3

September 27, 2021


It makes no difference to the sky
what happened here,

or the east wind taking its
much-needed break.

Even St. Michael
was taking vacation

from shattered glass
and squeal of tire

seated at the bar of some
scuzzy seaside honky-tonk,

on the ebb tide
of his third beer.

Yours in poetry,
Carey