Jefferson Carter
dedicated minor poet
TucsonSentinel.com front page
'It's wonderful, being a poet in Tucson': Carter's 'Free Hugs' debuts new poems, re-imagines old work
82-year-old Jefferson Carter is an admitted unreliable narrator in his writings
Posted Sep 7, 2025, 1:21 pm
Mia Kortright
Long-standing Tucson poet Jefferson Carter's 13th book came out earlier this year. "Free Hugs: Selected and New Poems" consists of dozens of poems from his previous anthologies, some rewritten, and 23 new ones.
Carter, 82, is admittedly an unreliable narrator in all of them. His poems seem to be "slice-of-life" musings. Each might begin with a situation he's experienced in real life, he said, before it shifts into a fictional scenario.
"I make stuff up all the time," Carter said on Thursday, sitting at a small table at Raging Sage Coffee Roasters in Midtown.
"Free Hugs" received one of the New Mexico Book Association's Southwest Book Design and Production Awards. Carter said the accolade was mainly based on the book's cover design, which used the work of a friend of his, Tucson painter Jim Waid.
The painting, titled "Rincon #2," can also be found on a wall at Tucson International Airport.
Carter has been retired from Pima Community College for nearly 20 years, where he taught composition and poetry. He chaired the Writing Department for the last 18 years of his tenure.
He's done readings at the college, as well as at the University of Arizona's Poetry Center, and has been featured at the Tucson Festival of Books and the Tucson Poetry Festival. He said he's found that the support he's shown other poets has come back to him in abundance.
"It's wonderful, being a poet in Tucson," he said.
Carter's first published poem came out in 1970, he said, in a small, Houston-based magazine that is likely now defunct. He said his reasoning for writing and publishing the rest is simple: How he relates to the words he uses.
"I think it boils down to the thrill I get when I get a line right," he said.
Carter couldn't say what contributed to his journey as a poet, but he remembers the day he was first bit by the poetry bug. He was in the fourth grade and his teacher had the class read "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer" by John Keats and it resonated. Having moved around a lot growing up, he used poetry as a tool to connect with others.
He hasn't been a stranger to controversy, some of which is addressed in "Free Hugs" through poems such as "They Told Me To Interrogate My White Male Cishet Privilege," "Kufi," and "Body Poetry."
In 2013, after the Arizona Daily Star published a poem he disliked, the letter to the editor he sent in response drew ire from some newspaper readers.
He stands by his critiques and holds strong opinions on what separates good poems from the bad ones, he said, he tries to be less "curmudgeonly" these days.
"I get that it's all subjective," he said, citing his preference for poems with original metaphors and vivid imagery.
'It's wonderful, being a poet in Tucson': Carter's 'Free Hugs' debuts new poems, re-imagines old work
82-year-old Jefferson Carter is an admitted unreliable narrator in his writings
Posted Sep 7, 2025, 1:21 pm
Mia Kortright
Long-standing Tucson poet Jefferson Carter's 13th book came out earlier this year. "Free Hugs: Selected and New Poems" consists of dozens of poems from his previous anthologies, some rewritten, and 23 new ones.
Carter, 82, is admittedly an unreliable narrator in all of them. His poems seem to be "slice-of-life" musings. Each might begin with a situation he's experienced in real life, he said, before it shifts into a fictional scenario.
"I make stuff up all the time," Carter said on Thursday, sitting at a small table at Raging Sage Coffee Roasters in Midtown.
"Free Hugs" received one of the New Mexico Book Association's Southwest Book Design and Production Awards. Carter said the accolade was mainly based on the book's cover design, which used the work of a friend of his, Tucson painter Jim Waid.
The painting, titled "Rincon #2," can also be found on a wall at Tucson International Airport.
Carter has been retired from Pima Community College for nearly 20 years, where he taught composition and poetry. He chaired the Writing Department for the last 18 years of his tenure.
He's done readings at the college, as well as at the University of Arizona's Poetry Center, and has been featured at the Tucson Festival of Books and the Tucson Poetry Festival. He said he's found that the support he's shown other poets has come back to him in abundance.
"It's wonderful, being a poet in Tucson," he said.
Carter's first published poem came out in 1970, he said, in a small, Houston-based magazine that is likely now defunct. He said his reasoning for writing and publishing the rest is simple: How he relates to the words he uses.
"I think it boils down to the thrill I get when I get a line right," he said.
Carter couldn't say what contributed to his journey as a poet, but he remembers the day he was first bit by the poetry bug. He was in the fourth grade and his teacher had the class read "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer" by John Keats and it resonated. Having moved around a lot growing up, he used poetry as a tool to connect with others.
He hasn't been a stranger to controversy, some of which is addressed in "Free Hugs" through poems such as "They Told Me To Interrogate My White Male Cishet Privilege," "Kufi," and "Body Poetry."
In 2013, after the Arizona Daily Star published a poem he disliked, the letter to the editor he sent in response drew ire from some newspaper readers.
He stands by his critiques and holds strong opinions on what separates good poems from the bad ones, he said, he tries to be less "curmudgeonly" these days.
"I get that it's all subjective," he said, citing his preference for poems with original metaphors and vivid imagery.
