Fern G. Z. Carr

Fern G. Z. Carr is a contemporary Canadian poet and writer who resides in Kelowna, British Columbia.

Fern G. Z. Carr was born in 1956 in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Carr attended the University of Manitoba where she obtained her Bachelor of Arts degree (BA) and her Bachelor of Laws degree (LLB).

She received her Call to the Bar from the Law Society of Manitoba.

After briefly practising law, Carr decided to pursue her interest in languages.

She enrolled at le Collège Universitaire de Saint-Boniface where she received her Certificat en Éducation and was the recipient of the Manitoba Government Book Prize for highest standing in her program.

Carr's early poetry from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s is more representative of traditional meter and rhyme.

She subsequently began to experiment with different forms and styles while continuing to compose traditional poetry in set forms such as pantoum and ghazal.

An admirer of Emily Dickinson, Carr liked the use of em dashes and often incorporated them into her poems.

She subsequently taught French Immersion before moving to Kelowna with her family in 1999.

She is married and is the sister-in-law of the late Jim Carr, former Member of Parliament and cabinet minister.

She is also the aunt of Ben Carr, Member of Parliament for Winnipeg South Centre.

In the 2000s, Carr's poetry style became more eclectic as she experimented with design.

This was particularly evident in her visual and concrete poetry as well as in her experimental math / science poems such as "The Fickle Nature of the Parabola" and "Holocaust Genealogy".

To date, her stylistic focus is free verse.

While Carr's poetry primarily is written in English, she also composes poems in French, Spanish, Italian, Yiddish and the Chinese Mandarin dialect.

Even though she occasionally translates the works of other poets, she tends to focus on bilingual and trilingual side-by-side translations of her own poetry.

Many of Carr's poems were influenced by her early years in Winnipeg's West End where she bore witness to poverty and crime.

While this darkness is evident in some of her poetry, she also composes poems which evoke a diverse array of human emotions.

Shards of Crystal reflects a dichotomy and as such, is described as a metamorphosis of darkness to light.

Dealing with issues such as suicide, trauma, dementia, cruelty to animals, and the death of a child, the book then gradually changes course.

It begins its transformative move towards the beauty of life with poems about musicality, spiritual liberation and the philosophy of existence.

It culminates in a philosophical examination of mankind's place in the universe with Carr's signature poem, "I Am".

The imagery in Shards of Crystal parallels the darkness-to-light chronology of Carr's poems.

This transition is essentially a redemptive move both literally and metaphorically, reconciling the pain of "Shards" at the outset of the book with the beauty and enlightenment of "Crystal" at the conclusion.

Beginning with the darkness of night and becoming progressively lighter, her poems ultimately achieve the illumination of the eternal.

This is in keeping with the overarching theme of hope as expressed by the Victor Hugo quote at the start of the book: "Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise."

Carr has been published extensively worldwide in Australia, Austria, Canada, China, Cyprus, England, Finland, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Malawi, Mauritius, Mayotte Island, Mexico, Morocco, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Peru, Philippines, Romania, Scotland, Seychelles, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, USA and Wales.

Whole Terrain, the environmental literary journal of Antioch University (Keene, NH, USA) featured an author profile with Carr.

The poet was questioned as to her reflective environmental practices and how they related to her poetry.

Bill Arnott, the curator of Artist Showcase, conducted a lighthearted interview with Fern G. Z. Carr which was also subsequently featured in The Miramichi Reader.

Goodreads posted an Ask the Author series of questions to Fern G. Z. Carr.

Topics included: source of ideas for her book, inspiration, current projects, advice for aspiring writers, the best thing about being a writer and dealing with writer's block.

Thomas Whyte curates a series of interviews with poets entitled poetry mini interviews.

A full member of the League of Canadian Poets, Fern G. Z. Carr is the author of Shards of Crystal (Silver Bow Publishing, 2018).

She is a former lawyer, teacher, and past president of both the Kelowna branch of the BC Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) and Project Literacy Central Okanagan Society.

Carr composes and translates poetry in six languages, including Mandarin.

Published over seven hundred times worldwide, Fern G. Z. Carr also curates her own YouTube Channel.

Her channel includes poetry, writing, language, and teaching resources.

One of Carr's poems is currently orbiting the planet Mars aboard NASA's MAVEN spacecraft.