A story of love and redemption, COVENANT by Kate Carter, is a never-before-published collection of elegantly crafted, masterful poems written over 30 years ago by a then-aspiring young writer. Kate’s impressive poetic talent transforms the ugly banality of personal confession into a sublime gift of love with a capital L.
Divided into three sections, this collection of poems explores the universal themes of love and betrayal, fear and courage, despair and hope, and commitment beyond measure. Kate's avatar charts a journey westbound in search of freedom from ordinary human suffering only to discover that freedom from suffering is not enough. She risks all in search of the freedom to live with love, to feel the weight of that love, and the power of her own unencumbered life.
Drawing on both Celtic traditions and her Episcopalian upbringing, Kate weaves the commonplace story of our individual brokenness through the strength of human resilience to the universal and awe-inspiring story of our shared divinity, a union that knows no bounds. This trove of poems, now recovered and brought to light, fulfills the promise of a lover’s memory.
A story of love and redemption, COVENANT by Kate Carter, is a never-before-published collection of elegantly crafted, masterful poems written over 30 years ago by a then-aspiring young writer. Kate’s impressive poetic talent transforms the ugly banality of personal confession into a sublime gift of love with a capital L.
Divided into three sections, this collection of poems explores the universal themes of love and betrayal, fear and courage, despair and hope, and commitment beyond measure. Kate's avatar charts a journey westbound in search of freedom from ordinary human suffering only to discover that freedom from suffering is not enough. She risks all in search of the freedom to live with love, to feel the weight of that love, and the power of her own unencumbered life.
Drawing on both Celtic traditions and her Episcopalian upbringing, Kate weaves the commonplace story of our individual brokenness through the strength of human resilience to the universal and awe-inspiring story of our shared divinity, a union that knows no bounds. This trove of poems, now recovered and brought to light, fulfills the promise of a lover’s memory.
Immram: The Journey
In ancient Celtic tradition, the immram is the story of a journey in which a voyager sails West into the uncharted sea in search of some mortal reward or vengeance for wrongs suffered. This journey opens a passage into the Celtic "Otherworld,", or the world beyond death. The Otherworld is revealed as a series of islands on which the voyager encounters strange creatures, beings and dreams.
EPIPHANY
It was in a city and in the city, water
always was the music of water rushing stone
It the place of passage where the old come to cross
the darkness of the shaft pressed hard into the earth
It the song of being, the language of their home
thick with Appalachia, buried water in the hills
It the morning bringing falcon to their call
It the old barrow, it the old oak
It the place of blessing where the knowing come to pass
ritual bestowal through the midwife to the girl
It the place of calling, it the boat at shore
the leaving, the journey, it has called me home
It is in a city and in the city, water
always is the music of water rushing stone
THE OUTWARD PASSAGE
I came to listen to the voice of the tree
woman curved into the trunk
swayed above, below, as I sat –
back against her legs stretched
along her great root reaching for water.
I had always listened until the day
she told me to go
to the water,
to go, to drink
and bathe myself.
A voice, mine, shook awake, answered the swell
around my thighs, wrapped me
cupped hands lifting water
high to drift through waves of air
and on that day
I began to hear
ISLAND OF THE BEETLE
The night shrank in as if the moon
was pulling back her breath,
stretching pale shadows from waking lights
of home. I saw them in the distance
angry flashes in the night
trembled as the house itself
realized my passing.
From that day I followed the long road to the sea
and every morning from my dreams
I heard my father's voice.
In the shape of the beetle he came to me,
in the shape of the thirsty and cold;
whatever the shape, the voice was his
the words of my body tearing apart. I would wake
to the heat of the moon, drenched in the flight of desire
to lose myself in waking, to sail far from home.
Selected Poems from Section II
PRESENCE
I became, the day we met,
a nebula exploding, then,
as weeks spun into months,
a whorl of every weighted thing
swallowed into night.
That celestial crystal night
cradles constellations
whose poetic names reverberate
against my empty tongue.
Dark passes into dark
and over the horizon
I sense the shards still glistening
the rendered body of my light,
its absence in the sky.
To remember, to remember:
it is no small thing
to watch each subtle spark of self succumb into the shattered pull
of what was once my home.
It is not her presence I grieve so much
as my own as I was in her presence.
ENERGY
Palmists and psychics flash their neon from every downtown corner
of a city I left years ago. They work a trade as foreign to me
as the damp lace quiet of alleyway rooms where women go,
men too, to ask the meaning of their dreams.
I was a religious child and had no use for cards or tea
to tell me that my dreams meant only what god promised.
Beaten and dead he hung from a cross-- –
the face of god impeccable, centered in my mind,
a god untroubled by restless sleep,
a god whose tears bled meaning.
So I was surprised when you woke from your dream
with a look I have seen only once
and that on the face of a priest
who was later removed, taken away, whose name was never spoken.
I always believed, though I never said, that his quick dispatch
had something to do with that look on his face in the middle of Mass
a look that couldn't hide the fact that he'd stepped beyond himself
and come back knowing something.
I was afraid to see that look, unquestioned, on your face- –
to see that now your eyes could sing,
your mouth could shape a perfect light,
your breath was clean of the bitterness, the waking after sleep.
And I wanted to run back to the city, back to the flashing alleyways
where they could tell me everything, your future, for a dollar.
You knew the way through, you said to me, and I was so afraid.
You saw it in a mirror, you said-- GOD=mc2.
I laughed because I had to-- my mouth a ragged vowel
of spasmed breath bursting through something besides fear.
I couldn't find the face of god. I couldn't say "ridiculous."
There within our morning bed the pulse of dream moved deep
and wrapped me in a meaning that you could understand.
Flash of orange, a tarot man--hanging, spinning, upside down.
I reached out empty handed, met palms that danced with light.
THE STONE APHRODITE
I chip away slowly the outer layer
and roughness falls exposes
a sea green morning dust
like fog clings to my hammer stroke
metal on metal cuts a narrow path
content to float exploring
the surface while barely perceptible
shape of imagination waits
for the tap the tap of metal
on metal on rock
to open the way
Inner darkness quickens
as sunlight air rush caress
the depth a string bows
tension fine resonance reverberates
loosens crystal structure weakens
bonds of opposition attracting
hammer and chisel harmonious
swell the lush vibrato
The fog lifts as there you sit
no eyes no arms
but breasts and belly
strong back your head
animal like in slope and bent
to the side regarding
me with hammer and chisel
in hand I know
I was meant to find you here patient in this way
Covenant, published by Yvonne Lutter, is a collection of poetry by Kate Carter, Lutter's late lover. From the opening foreword this collection holds the moving talent of a woman enamoured with art, creation and her craft.
Carter's legacy is impressive with these poems hailing from thirty years ago yet retaining their relevance and freshness, as if written only yesterday. Carter's treatment of universal themes ensures her poems capture you and help you find yourself within her words and woven imagery.
Poems like 'Island Of The Shadow' create a sense of rapture; the poignant realisation as a child that death comes for everyone, how one day you will be next and how while many fear this, others see this a chance to be released, to be free.
'I sleep in submission, wake from the crossing / into a common country where I have no need to beg.'
While 'Island Of The Ancestors' considers legacy, identity, who we are, were and who we might yet become. Carter weaves death and birth masterfully to demonstrate the joy and 'birth' in discovering who you truly are and where you belong.
'She tells me I will die tonight / and she will guide my passing / toward the possibility of waking up alive'.
Carter's imagery is steeped in nature, our environment, the everyday and the body. It is beautiful and sublime. It reawakens the themes of love, loss, fear, etc., without the cliché, without the feeling this has all been said before.
Finally, longer poems such as 'Transfiguration' marry the above with the human experience and our need to know our place in the world.
'My eyes again are child's eyes born here into vision. / My choice the crux awakening, / the water smell of light.'
Covenant is a piece of us, thirty years on from when these poems were written, it is a collection breathing with what it means to exist and survive. Many readers will find comfort in Carter's words, and hope in Lutter's wish to honour Carter's talent and narrative.