I grew up in a fertile valley of the West Branch of the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania. We always had gardens, and I’m still a gardener. My first poem was a rhymed couplet about spring that I dreamed one night when I was in second grade. I learned much about the land and taking care of it from visiting my Dad’s parents’ farm every Sunday--that's the inspiration for my most recent chapbook, SUNDAY DINNER AT THE FARM:
“Accompanied by evocative old photos, the poems recreate how it felt to grow up on a farm in central Pennsylvania. Without
sentimentalizing or preaching about a way of life long gone, Carter’s poems make your mouth water and your heart expand as her
grandparents and parents come to life as we read. The book ends with the lines “I remember! I remember!” and she makes
us remember, too. “Their smiles are genuine,” she observes of one of the photos—and so are Nancy Corson Carter’s poems.”
-Peter Meinke, Poet Laureate of Florida
The natural world, writing, and the life of the spirit show up over and over for me, as you will see in my 2019 book, A GREEN BOUGH: POEMS FOR RENEWAL. Before that, it was a constant in my academic life. My M.A. thesis combined the writing of Henry David Thoreau with Andrew Wyeth’s art; my Ph.D. dissertation explored photographic portraits in Alfred Stieglitz’s journal CAMERA WORK as cultural documents. As a professor of Humanities at Eckerd College, I developed many interdisciplinary courses. “Journals, Diaries, and Letters,” “Women in the Arts,” “Literature of Ecology: Writings from the Earth Household,” and “Pilgrimage: Sacred Writing, Sacred Life”-- all live on for me. Topics of my essays and articles include Thomas Merton’s photography, an eco-expedition to the flooded forests of the Brazilian Amazon, and war and the environment.
I’ve collaborated in a series of workshops, “Poetry, Movement, and Healing,”; I’ve shared contemplative prayer retreats and groups with Shalem Institute friends; I’ve team-taught courses focused on C.G. Jung and on art and ritual. I’ve led house blessings; I’m working on “eldering blessings.” I’ve given slide lectures on “whole Earth interconnections”--that's the area I explore in the book of poems I'm now sending out, VOICES FOR OUR FRAGILE WORLD.
My memoir, THE NEVER-QUITE-ENDING WAR: A WWII GI DAUGHTER'S STORIES, focuses on my father, as my mother and I waited 2 1/2 anxious years for his return, and then the lingering effects of his service on me and my family as I grew up in the 1940s and 50s. In the ensuing years, especially in teaching and in travel with my husband, Howard, I meet with ways in which I understand that that war continues to affect my life and the life of the world around me.
My realization of the necessity of peacemaking, individually and communally, is a major theme. I find the work a kind of culmination of my interdisciplinary bent-- my prose is sparked with haiku (I adapt the Japanese form of haibun, linking haiku with prose to describe a journey), with other poems, and with illustrations ranging from war postcards to family photos.
My goal is to encourage hope and healing, to expand our resources for co-creating a just and peaceful, life-sustaining Earth Home for all.
Gratitude is the finest flower of the human heart.
-Simone Weil
I grew up in a fertile valley of the West Branch of the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania. We always had gardens, and I’m still a gardener. My first poem was a rhymed couplet about spring that I dreamed one night when I was in second grade. I learned much about the land and taking care of it from visiting my Dad’s parents’ farm every Sunday--that's the inspiration for my most recent chapbook, SUNDAY DINNER AT THE FARM:
“Accompanied by evocative old photos, the poems recreate how it felt to grow up on a farm in central Pennsylvania. Without
sentimentalizing or preaching about a way of life long gone, Carter’s poems make your mouth water and your heart expand as her
grandparents and parents come to life as we read. The book ends with the lines “I remember! I remember!” and she makes
us remember, too. “Their smiles are genuine,” she observes of one of the photos—and so are Nancy Corson Carter’s poems.”
-Peter Meinke, Poet Laureate of Florida
The natural world, writing, and the life of the spirit show up over and over for me, as you will see in my 2019 book, A GREEN BOUGH: POEMS FOR RENEWAL. Before that, it was a constant in my academic life. My M.A. thesis combined the writing of Henry David Thoreau with Andrew Wyeth’s art; my Ph.D. dissertation explored photographic portraits in Alfred Stieglitz’s journal CAMERA WORK as cultural documents. As a professor of Humanities at Eckerd College, I developed many interdisciplinary courses. “Journals, Diaries, and Letters,” “Women in the Arts,” “Literature of Ecology: Writings from the Earth Household,” and “Pilgrimage: Sacred Writing, Sacred Life”-- all live on for me. Topics of my essays and articles include Thomas Merton’s photography, an eco-expedition to the flooded forests of the Brazilian Amazon, and war and the environment.
I’ve collaborated in a series of workshops, “Poetry, Movement, and Healing,”; I’ve shared contemplative prayer retreats and groups with Shalem Institute friends; I’ve team-taught courses focused on C.G. Jung and on art and ritual. I’ve led house blessings; I’m working on “eldering blessings.” I’ve given slide lectures on “whole Earth interconnections”--that's the area I explore in the book of poems I'm now sending out, VOICES FOR OUR FRAGILE WORLD.
My memoir, THE NEVER-QUITE-ENDING WAR: A WWII GI DAUGHTER'S STORIES, focuses on my father, as my mother and I waited 2 1/2 anxious years for his return, and then the lingering effects of his service on me and my family as I grew up in the 1940s and 50s. In the ensuing years, especially in teaching and in travel with my husband, Howard, I meet with ways in which I understand that that war continues to affect my life and the life of the world around me.
My realization of the necessity of peacemaking, individually and communally, is a major theme. I find the work a kind of culmination of my interdisciplinary bent-- my prose is sparked with haiku (I adapt the Japanese form of haibun, linking haiku with prose to describe a journey), with other poems, and with illustrations ranging from war postcards to family photos.
My goal is to encourage hope and healing, to expand our resources for co-creating a just and peaceful, life-sustaining Earth Home for all.
Gratitude is the finest flower of the human heart.
-Simone Weil