Carolyn Martin

From associate professor of English to management trainer to retiree, Carolyn Martin has journeyed from New Jersey to Oregon to discover Douglas firs, months of rain, and dry summers. She claims that poetry is the way her mind interacts with the world – in images, rhythms, sounds, and intensities of language. After years of correcting academic papers and business books, she’s settled into the joyful challenge of translating experience into as few words as possible. Her aesthetic is embodied in Jack Kerouac's comment in Dharma Bums: “One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple”; and in Galway Kinnell's statement, “To me, poetry is somebody standing up ... and saying, with as little concealment as possible, what it is for him or her to be on earth at this moment.” Her poems attempt to be simple in words as they grapple with the complexity of living on earth today.

Martin’s poems and book reviews have appeared in publications throughout North America and the UK including “Stirring,” “Naugatuck River Review,” “CALYX,” “The Curlew,” and “Antiphon.” Her third collection, Thin Places, was released by Kelsay Books in 2017. She is currently the poetry editor of Kosmos Quarterly, journal for global transformation. Find out more about Carolyn on her author’s website.

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