ANN ELIZABETH CARSON, BA (Hons.) U of T ’51, M.Ed. U of T ’70, Arscura School of Art (Toronto) ’85—poet, writer, sculptor, feminist and one of ‘Toronto’s Mille Femmes’ (2008 Luminato Festival, which paid tribute to women who have made a contribution to the arts). ANN ELIZABETH has devoted her careers in psychotherapy and writing to understanding the silenced voices in our society, and to attempting to give them a place through her work. She is fascinated by the intersection of word with sound, visual images and movement and delighted to be working across artistic boundaries with writers, musicians, painters and dancers. Read more >
Another Open Door: New and Selected Work,
Responses & Reviews
Review by Renia Tyminski
“Ann Carson’s insights are those of a decades-long feminist, a poet and prose writer who once again, in Another Open Door, reminds us of how powerfully nature brings us to our senses and helps us become whole again. It’s also a practical reflection on selfhood in a body that has adapted to the stages of life as a keenly observant and engaged Canadian. Ultimately, this varied collection points the way to what it sounds and looks like when we take charge of our own stories, while celebrating the various webs of relationship that make us aware of place and purpose.”
Cover Review by Olena Nitefor
“Such a beautiful cover – a sculpture that invites into a mysterious depth of its own opening and it’s own voluptuously bulbous body. The inward curl of one of the “flaps” at the opening is both welcoming inward and “sheltering” of that which has entered inside. For me, a rich in metaphor and deep in feeling “pear.” The subtle shade that the pear is casting onto its “space” on the cover situates this metaphorical richness into the reality of now. WOW dear Ann. I needed to understand and feel the richness of this cover as I sit here in cold and grey Berlin having read news from the two wars that I am following.”
“Always wonderful to hear or read your thought-provoking and evocative poetry, Ann! Congratulations!”
– Rosanna Battigelli
“Thanks Ann – really enjoyed your work and your connection to the natural world!”
– unknown
“Thank you Ann for the wonderful contemporary and memory poems.”
– Blaine
Branches Video collaboration with Jana Skarecky.
“Beautiful music and images, intertwined.”
– Caroline Di Giovanni
“What a gorgeous collaboration!”
– Penn Kemp
“Beautiful — my favorite photo — the buds”
– Sue Chenette
Text by Ann E. Carson; piano music composed and performed by Jana Skarecky; photographs by Jana Skarecky.
Branches
autumn leaves long gone
stray nests of woven twigs
tightly furled leaf buds
Ann Elizabeth Carson’s latest book Loose Ends, published by Aeolus House.
Available online through VolumesDirect.com >
League of Canadian Poets
Loose Ends a Tightly Woven Collection: Review of Loose Ends by Ann Carson, Reviewed by Sean Arthur Joyce “In Loose Ends Carson has woven together a focused, highly accomplished collection with many wonderful lines that leap out at the reader …the “Oh!” one experiences at the unexpected, the original.”
Read the review >
The Sudbury Star
Bonni Kogos, in the Sudbury star: “Ann Elizabeth Carson’s Loose Ends, her seventh compellingly brilliant book reflects on childhood, aging, and what it is that binds all us humans, as well as our deep connection to our beautiful, fragile planet….”
Read the review >
“In Ann Carson’s poems the body is a fragile container, but the spirit and the senses remain strong and engaged with the surrounding world, especially nature. … The poems of Loose Ends are tactile and vivid, at times sensual and often courageous in their insistence on life in the face of physical frailty. The poems declare with vigor, that a human life is so much more than the sum of its parts.”
―Kate Rogers, author of Out of Place and City of Stairs
“Ann Elizabeth Carson’s Loose Ends is a poetic meditation that looks back on a life well-lived, and reflects on life, death, ageing, childhood, the ties that bind all us humans, and our deep connection to our beautiful, fragile planet. The delicate yet powerful poems in this book create links between the past and present: Carson vividly evokes her girlhood during the Depression and WWII, then draws parallels between the horrors of that historical period and those of our own. This is a moving and life-affirming book, reminding us tenderly but insistently what we owe to each other and our world.”
―Nora Gold, author of The Dead Man, Fields of Exile, and Marrow
“How lucky am I to have read Loose Ends, a new and wonderful collection by Ann Elizabeth Carson! Reflecting upon her poignant and evocative poetry and prose, you experience a sensory nurturing that embraces your soul and reawakens your appreciation of nature and humanity. Carson’s striking artwork enhances this radiant offering.”
― Rosanna Micelotta Battigelli, author of La Brigantessa and Pigeon Soup & Other Stories
Review of Ann Elizabeth Carson’s book by Donna Langevin, author of Brimming, Piquant Press, 2019.
Ann Elizabeth Carson’s ark was a gift carved by her fourteen-year-old uncle who died shortly after she was born. Jack didn’t have enough time to carve the animals, and so she fills the ark with her own cargo of memories contained in poems, stories, essays and postcards spanning her lifelong voyage. Rich in sensuous details and meticulously observed, her travels to Manitoulin and Monhegan Islands glow with fierce love for the land and seascape. Her incisive, sometimes disturbing essays, meditations on human nature, environment, feminism and aging command our attention and response. Brimming with the wisdom of an elder determined to celebrate even as these moorings loosen and she leaves the ark behind to be filled with my children’s memories, this book is a treasure.
Read excerpts here, or available online through VolumesDirect.com >
Ann Elizabeth Carson’s Laundry Lines, A Memoir in Stories and Poems (Inanna Publications 2015) continues her exploration of the silenced voices in our society. Her work has appeared in various publications from Maine to Vancouver and in four previously published books: Shadows Light, My Grandmother’s Hair, The Risks of Remembrance and We All Become Stories. A Toronto native and long-time summer resident on Manitoulin Island, Ann Elizabeth writes, sculpts and reads from her work in solo and collaborative events in Toronto and on the Island.
Available online through inanna.ca >
Previously published work:
- Carson challenges the stereotypes of old age in We All Become Stories (Blue Denim Press, 2013): twelve profiles of older people recounting the extraordinary changes they made that enabled them to find a satisfying place in societies that seldom welcome or respect old age. Available online through Amazon.com >
- In The Risks of Remembrance (Words Indeed Publishing, 2010), Carson’s subtle yet accessible poems risk “one fierce question at a time” as she fearlessly excavates the “rich mulch of memory,” untangling the skeins of her life to transform trauma into songs of celebration. –Margo Little, author, Portraits of Spirit Island: The Manitoulin School of Art Comes to Life. Available online through VolumesDirect.com >
- My Grandmother’s Hair (Edgar Kent, 2007; Dundurn, 2010), is a social memoir in prose, poetry and the author’s artwork about how our family and social milieu shape our lives. Marion Woodman wrote: “an autobiography told with alarming authenticity . . . in the connecting power of myth and of her own painting, poetry and sculpture.” Available online through dundurn.com >
- Shadows Light published in 2005. Available online through VolumesDirect.com >