Water Street Bookstore is excited to be hosting Mark DeCarteret, for the launch of his latest book, Props! He will be joined by some writers who are featured in the book:

Kathleen Clancy

Tim Horvath

Willie Perdomo

John Perrault

Mimi White

Jim Rioux

Bob Moore

Jessica Purdy

Mike Nelson

About Props: If you’re in the market for another faint-of-heart, asthmatic, candy-assed anthology, then it probably best that you shirk this circular. Because Props: Poetic Intros, Praises, Co-Conspiracies, Pairings is a high-amped sampler of 50 or so New Hampshire poets, that DeCarteret bonds and corresponds with, via the semi-found and fun-filled, the nonstop fluid and deafeningly unsound that even Jerseyite Whitman might write up a promo, stomp his boot-soles. And an asbestos-lined maze that even Massachusettsan Dickinson, might rub two bones the wrong way, tip the top of her head, tap her toes. A map for the apathetic poet. A spell for lapsed rhapsodists. A musical score for those whose sum is part whole and part holy mess. Props is also a playlist and prayer. A workbook and simple. Pitted against the stupidly phoned-in and the artificially decimated, the binge-hungover and the serially unhinged.

About Mark DeCarteret: He was born in Lowell, Massachusetts. On “The Road Ride” at the Jack Kerouac Theme Park. And studied with Sam Cornish, Bill Knott, Tom Lux, Mekeel McBride, Charles Simic, and Franz Wright. (See: Representative at the Greater Boston Poetry Festival, Thomas Williams Memorial Prize.) He’s worked a third of his life installing tile, a third teaching, and a third selling books. Going on 13 years at Water Street in Exeter. And has hosted and organized two reading series. Co-edited an anthology of NH poets. He was Poet Laureate of Portsmouth NH. Twice, a finalist for NH Poet Laureate. Mark’s poems have appeared in over 500 magazines including AGNI, The American Poetry Review, Asheville Poetry Review, BlazeVOX (which recently published the first chapter of his novel Off Season), Boston Review, Caliban, Chicago Review, Fence, Gargoyle, Hole in the Head, Map Literary, On the Seawall, Plume, and Nixes Mate (which recently published his seventh book of poetry lesser case). As well as 30 anthologies. Among them, American Poetry: The Next Generation (Carnegie Mellon Press), Places of Passage: Contemporary Catholic Poetry (Story Line Press), and Thus Spake the Corpse: An Exquisite Corpse Reader 1988-1998 (Black Sparrow Press). He performs with the Dadaist troupe Carteret Voltaire. And plays drums and sings with Codpiece.

Mark will be donating $1 to the Michael J. Fox foundation for each book sold!