MARLEY

Karen Carter is a poet, writer, and educator.

With a B.A., M.Div. and PhD, she has taught at all levels of learning and presently teaches high school English and Creative Writing.

Many poems in her debut collection, Deep Dive, have appeared previously in anthologies and literary journals. She lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Karen Carter’s Deep Dive reveals healing and hope. A memoir in poetry, these poems travel from the safe space of therapy in Oklahoma, where the poet plunges into an ocean of grief and hits rock bottom. She develops courage during decades of adulthood, exploring a path through redemptive suffering.

In the sanctuary of her front porch in rural North Carolina and in the remote everydayness of a schoolteacher during COVID, she sits with sorrow. She takes a deep dive into the ordinary, natural world and experiences the inner and outer world joined together without shame. Finally, at the Outer Banks, North Carolina, the victim tosses the loss and the pain of violence done to her body and mind into the sea.

Finding spiritual power to rise from trauma’s depth, the poet cherishes new life in the present and hope in all eternity.

From the therapy chairs of Oklahoma to the solitude of her front porch in rural North Carolina; from the classroom during COVID to the beaches of the Outer Banks, Karen Carter asks us to dive deep into the natural world and dive even deeper into our suffering, courage and healing. 

She interrogates a dragonfly: “My dear dragonfly, what do your eyes see?”  She faces her nightmares and flashbacks of the violence done to her body and mind. With great courage, she chooses to dig her feet into the sand and, like Jesus, drive the demonic pigs into the sea. Finally, she releases her “sobs without shame to the Begotten, not Made, while the waves roll on into eternity.”

If your heart wants a companion as it dives deep into the grief and ashes of life where at the bottom of the dive there is healing and hope and newness of life to be found, then this book will become your treasured friend, a candle when the night wind blows.
 
Rev. Curtis M. Abbott, D.Min, LPC, LMFT.
Co-Founder of The Center for Psychotherapy Education and Spiritual Growth, Inc.
Oklahoma City