Ecstacies and Elegies

BACKGROUND Carter is an artist and interdisciplinary scholar for whom this is the first poetry publication. He was motivated to produce the work after a few poetry works exploring the genre as a discipline to convey abstract thought succinctly and the concrete with a philosophical element. His research is founded in the Heraclitus doctrines that things are constantly changing (universal flux) and that opposites coincide (unity of opposites). He flexes his creative muscle in an exploration of poetic structure while exploring the paradoxical nuances of life. CONTRIBUTION The poems of Ecstasies and Elegies pay homage to those to whom they are dedicated through both classical and particular references and a complementary virtuosic range of styles that speak to and of the person/s to whom the work is dedicated. 'The way up and the way down are the same', said Heraclitus, and in this moving collection the ecstasy of love coexists with the grief of death; the pain of loss is in proportion to the longing for union. We encounter a startling overlay of immemorial myth and ephemeral urban encounter. Spirits of the classical world jostle with the sensory stimuli of contemporary domestic life. Carter references the imagery and style of those to whom he pays homage evocatively making the dead part of the conversation. His research includes outstanding handling of the metaphor: 'The use of metaphor in Carter's hands is dizzyingly kaleidoscopic and boldly counteracts the common dictum that poets should avoid 'mixing their metaphors'. (Jennifer Harrison, Australian Book Review Aug 2014). SIGNIFICANCE The book has sold in 28 countries and is published by UWAP which is supported by the Australia Council and publishes poets such as John Shaw Nielsen, Lesbia Harford and Paul Hetherington.