The title, Evil is a Terrific Rubbery Goblet, was born from an exercise with refrigerator magnets and Carrie’s nephew, Daniel – and captures her central attitude toward the tonic known as “life”. Carrie Gardner has been writing poetry for 20 years, but this is her very first independent publication. Her poetry has been described by friends, critics and fellow writers as ‘rare and uniquely detailed’, ‘devastating moving pictures’, and ‘way cool’. Carrie describes her poetry as experiments in truth. You decide.
Carrie learned about poetry from a high school English teacher named Santo. He would play the Moody Blues and tell her class, ‘Take out a blank sheet of paper’. She majored in English and creative writing at Fredonia State University and was published in the campus newspaper and creative writing chapbooks. A first taste of “official” recognition came in 1987 when she received honorable mention in American Collegiate Poets’ National poetry contest.
During the late 90’s, she lived in Bloomington, Indiana while working at Indiana University. Welcomed by the literary community, she performed and published chapbooks with an established writer’s group called Five Women Poets; read on WFHB radio; performed and published through a local writers and artists organization called Matrix; and is published in anthologies of Indiana / Midwest poets. She also studied poetry and performed at the Waldron Arts Center.
Currently, Carrie is a member of a new Western New York spoken word performance group called "Monsters of Verse", and is heartily anticipating her first tour, opening in October 2008.
She has also performed her poetry through Just Buffalo Literary Center; reads at an annual gathering of WNY writers called Urban Epiphany; and has performed under the empowering wings of Rosemary and Bill Kothe. In addition, she was a featured artist in ARTVOICE, a print and on-line newspaper originated in Buffalo, NY. For more information about Carrie Gardner, visit: www.spadterforge.com.
the day uniforms were abolished
Nostrils flaring, Sylvia let the strap of her polyester sundress
drop from her shoulder, while Harold slid his milk-pasty
tongue over the rim of the glass he held tightly in his hand,
fingernails caked with sky-blue remnants of dried play-dough.
They loved each other, in that moment right before the lunch
bell rang. What they didn’t know, was that Sister Claire-Marie-Theresa-Bruce saw this and made note of it in her flogging journal.