A Poet Librarian

My name is Melissa Eleftherion Carr. I manage a main branch of a public library system. Like a lot of librarians, I wear many hats in relationship with our community – reference, reader’s advisory, collection development, outreach, publicity, marketing, project management, circulation, food service… whatever it takes. It’s the best job in the world.

I’m also a poet, & recently completed my term as Poet Laureate of the City of Ukiah, CA 2021-2023. My work has been collected in various forms and fragments including journals, anthologies, four full-length collections, and 12 chapbooks including: huminsect (dancing girl press, 2013), prism maps (dusie kollektiv), Pigtail Duty (dancing girl press, 2015), the leaves the leaves (poems-for-all, 2018), green glass asterisms (poems-for-all, 2018), little ditch (above/ground press, 2018) trauma suture (above/ground press, 2020), abalone (poems-for-all, 2021), sunflower spell (poems-for-all, 2022), & abject sutures (above/ground press, 2024) My poems have been published in over 100 journals and anthologies, including Entropy, Sixth Finch, & Barren Magazine.

My first full-length collection, field guide to autobiography, was published in 2018 by The Operating System. The book explores the inter-relatedness of various species through accreted fragments toward autobiography. How does a person begin to enumerate the many fragments & fractals that comprise a life? field guide to autobiography is an attempt at memoir through the lens of various animals & minerals including katydids, wrens, abalone shells, and apple trees. This 2nd edition of field guide to autobiography includes an index to the myriad species discussed in the book, along with a special interview between myself & the publisher, Elae Moss.

My second full-length collection, gutter rainbows, is forthcoming from Querencia Press. Gutter Rainbows is about transformation through trauma. It’s about growing up in Brooklyn & forming alliances with sidewalks. About being a girl on the verge of something shattering. About the fur. Many of the poems in this collection are based on a type of mineral. I work with the language of minerals and rocks to tell a story of the relationship between women & geological trauma, along with the sediment of betrayal that lingers in our foundation. This book is about trusting yourself enough to claw your way out.

• Copyright

  apoetlibrarian by Melissa Eleftherion is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.