‘In Imagined Sons Carrie Etter reflects on the experience of a birthmother who gave up her son when she was seventeen. In a series of haunting, psalm-like prose poems of enormous courage and insight, she describes possible encounters with this son now in his late teens, expressing how ‘sometimes the melancholy arrives before the remembering’. The series of ‘Birthmother’s Catechisms’ return to repeated, harrowing questions that yield different answers at different moments. This quite extraordinary book by a writer of great imagistic power and skill leaves a mark on the reader which is ineradicable. These are poems of the utmost importance.’
Bernard O’Donoghue
Born in Normal, Illinois, Carrie Etter has lived in California and the UK and is a poet, essayist, critic and Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. She is the author of a number of poetry books and pamphlets including The Tethers (Seren, ISBN: 9781854114921) which won a London Festival Fringe First Book Prize and she has edited the anthology Infinite Difference: Other Poetries by UK Women Poets (Shearsman), Her poetry and criticism have appeared widely in the USA and the UK including Poetry Review, The Times Literary Supplement and the Guardian.