Junior Miles and the Junkman
Junior and his family live in a junkyard, where his father creates pieces of art from the junk surrounding them. When Junior’s father falls ill and dies, Junior and his mother are left with few resources, other than what his mother brings in from her job as a waitress. The junkyard is threatened by encroaching development, and just when Junior thinks all is lost, he finds that a junk sculpture of a man, gifted to him by his father, begins to speak to him. The junkman provides advice in the form of enigmas. Are they clues? Or is it nonsense? Junior and his best friend, Isaac, embark on a journey to find out. Can a man made of junk parts teach Junior about art and friendship and overcoming the loss of a loved one? Only if Junior believes it can.
Olympus Heights
With Olympus Heights, Kevin Carey and Colleen Michaels have done no less than reclaim for us the classical pantheon, restoring its relevance in a cock-eyed and satirical way. Here the gods’ adventures are comedy, the serious kind that pokes fun at the pompous, levels high and low, and calls out absurdity.
Murder in the Marsh
Murder in the Marsh - "A street-tough crime novel with a poetic soul" Jim DeFilippi
A new murder mystery by Kevin Carey from Darkstroke Books. It’s 1980, Revere Beach, Massachusetts (just outside of Boston), wise guys and gamblers on every corner. Eddie Devlin is about to be relieved of his duty as a detective on The Revere Police Department. He has problems, chief among them is a missing body— One year ago, Eddie shot a man who murdered a woman in the marsh. The man’s body disappeared at the scene of the crime. Eddie became a suspect, then a person of interest, then a casualty of the year-long investigation. Shortly after he is let go, two more bodies are found in the same place (both domestic abusers who were never convicted) and more suspicions about Eddie return. Haunted and determined to clear his name, the new civilian Devlin conducts his own investigation, battling his relentless demons on the way to a deeper conspiracy.
Set in Stone
When I think of a Kevin Carey poem I think of Boston, and basketball, of poems carved out of the east coast city where he has lived his life. In this his 3rd book, Carey has wrought arguably his finest work including one of the most poignant poems of a friend’s suicide I have ever read. There are narratives here, list poems, lyrics and elegies, a hint of Catholicism found in a mother’s rosary beads, a father praying after work, and the specificity of old Buicks and the Tobin Bridge. This is a book of powerful testaments that will offer any open reader, like in basketball, “that first good step” toward survival.
Sean Thomas Dougherty, author of The Second O of Sorrow
Jesus Was A Homeboy
In Jesus Was a Homeboy,” Kevin Carey returns to the urban beach front, the dusty gymnasiums, the barrooms and the restaurants that have defined the chapters of his life. The poet reflects on his past, his adolescence, the family members who have moved on, his own children, his relationships with his parents and friends. He has learned much from the people he spent time with, from the jobs he's had, to the mistakes he’s made — and he embraces these experiences with truth and humor and grit. We learn, along with poet, the hard lessons of separation, of growing older, of wishing and wanting the things that are beyond our reach.
"The poet shows us there is strength and fear in vulnerability, and he shows this to us in the subtle, unpretentious sharing of everyday imagery. In this there is power, a certain power that requires the poet to suspend belief in the same. Carey has given us a book that is wise, and more profoundly so because the one power he subscribes to is the child’s heart."
—Afaa Michael Weaver
The One Fifteen To Penn Station
One Fifteen to Penn Station. Book of Poetry. CavanKerry Press, NJ. 2012. Poetry that takes us from an urban beachfront in the shadow of the Boston skyline to the halls of a private prep school, from the corner drugstore to the playground basketball court.
"Carey's universe may be set in blue-collar New England, but out of that backdrop, we find a man very much like ourselves trying to hold on to what everyone loses eventually--his children as they grow up, his parents, long-time friends, perhaps, most important of all, his sense of where he thought he was going to be when he was young and what life is for him now."
-Maria Mazziotti Gillan - from the Foreword.
Unburying Malcolm Miller
Filmmakers Kevin Carey and Mark Hillringhouse have again turned the camera on the life of a poet, as they did with their 2012 documentary about New Jersey’s Maria Mazziotti GIllan (All That Lies Between Us). With “Unburying Malcom Miller” they have focused on a Salem, MA poet whose work was influential enough that Gerald Stern said “all students should read it” and whose life was strange enough that he went from being homeless and institutionalized to leaving bundles of hundred dollar bills in his kitchen drawer when he died in 2014. He also left behind a substantial canon of poetry which explored his personal relationships and his cynical view of the world around him. The film showcases his poems and his friendships with such poets as Leonard Cohen and a former Salem State faculty member and writer, Rod Kessler, who befriended Miller at the end of his life and took it upon himself to get to know him better beyond his death. Kessler’s interviews with those who knew Miller, along with readings by local poets of his work, reveal just how complicated and memorable a poet and a man can be to a community.
"This guy is an outsider poet...a rare bird."
Gerald Stern
*To order a copy of this film please send a request to kcareywriter@gmail.com.
All That Lies Between Us
"All That Lies Between Us" is a journey through the life of one New Jersey poet and her mission to keep poetry alive in her native city of Paterson and beyond. Maria Mazziotti Gillan’s story is a true American tale: the daughter of Italian immigrants she rose out of poverty to become a force in the poetry world and an inspiration to writers everywhere
"When this fascinating documentary is over you understand that if there were a country called Poetry, Paterson would be its capital and Maria Mazziotti Gillan would be its president."
Jeff Page / journalist /writer
*Watch film here, To order a copy please send a request to kcareywriter@gmail.com