In the weeks and months that followed the Presidential election of 2016, poets Tina Carlson, Stella Reed, and Katherine DiBella Seluja felt the need for strong female voices that could speak in a universal way. In this collaborative collection of poems, We Are Meant To Carry Water, three distinct voices emerged—that of the mythical Leda; the first woman of the Garden, Lilith; and an anonymous migrant girl. They began to communicate with each other, often in the forms of notes and letters in an attempt to understand their lives and to gain empowerment. In issues that transverse time, their voices now address systemic patriarchy, misogyny, and the marginalization of the immigrant.
Acclaim
- Winner of the New Mexico/Arizona Book Award in Poetry Anthology, 2020
- Winner of the Southwest Book Design Award in Poetry, 2020
We Are Meant To Carry Water is a breathtaking and wholly original book, written by three poets as if their voices had merged. In these pages are personae aplenty, sifted from myth: Helen of Troy, hatched from an egg; her mother, Leda, raped/loved by Zeus in the guise of a swan; the archetypal migrant girl, the one we are and have come from; the horned and charred Lilith, and her successor, Eve of the garden; and more. The women mourn, they ask, “Are we only bone, skin and urge?” They speak for one another, “Your story in my mouth.” Their stories “share the same heart.” And of their violators, they keen, “I know where you are/. . ./in harrowed earth, poisoned wells, the back of my throat/filled with fingers.” Of themselves they croon, “We are meant to carry water/spilling from our hips and mouths/while Gods and Swans merely float/or walk its surface.” Here is the song book of our future. Read it out loud, and pass it on.
Hilda Raz, Divine Honors
We Are Meant To Carry Water is a brilliant collection in which three different voices compose one choral whole, re-envisioning a myth into our lives, teaching us (in this complex, terrifying time and country of ours) to enter the space where the “voice can be an asylum” once again. Bravo.
Ilya Kaminsky, Deaf Republic
Where to Buy
ISBN: 978-0-9994848-1-4
Publication Date: March, 2019
Paperback
We Are Meant To Carry Water is available directly from the publisher for $25.00 with free shipping.
Press Bookstore: www.3taospress.com
The book also is available from independent bookstores and Amazon.
3: A Taos Press
P.O. Box 370627
Denver, CO 80237
Please contact the publisher for special price for classroom sets:
3taospress@gmail.com
Tina Carlson, Stella Reed, & Katherine DiBella Seluja, Authors
Lesley Cox, Designer, FEEL Design Associates
Taos, NM
