Durell Carter

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Durell Carter offers a powerful but gentle voice depicting his unique personal journey in the greater contexts of family and politicized culture. His themes of Black masculinity, interrupted faith, a grandfather’s aura, and the ghosts of past and present fortified by his respect for language and his forays into myth-making will resonate with any reader. I continue to be impressed and inspired, as will you.

--Ken Hada, author of Nexus

Durell Carter’s Views From the Red-Light Aquarium is a heartfelt “culmination of Black audacity,” a full-circle come-to-Jesus-moment that asks us to sit down, suck on a piece of purse candy, and examine America as it “Americas” us. Carter deftly calls upon the wisdom of yesterday and sage voices from his present, including Kendrick Lamar, to help him meet the daily challenge to be the “last one standing” in a place that has us “running on pebbles” and “slipping on yesterdays” in this ode to black selfhood. The poems in Views From the Red-Light Aquarium remember everything; a well-deserved hallelujah, indeed.

--erica lewis, author of mahogany

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Durell Carter is a poet, educator, and workshop facilitator based in Oklahoma City. He holds an M.A. in Literature from the University of Central Oklahoma. His poetry has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations, as well as nominations for Best of the Net, Best New Poets, and the Orison Books Spirituality Award. He is the recipient of the Rawhead Editor’s Prize, and his work has appeared in numerous literary journals, including Blue Rivers, Rawhead, and The Closed Eye Open.

Carter is the author of the chapbook Mr. Monday Morning’s Broken Songs and Testimonies (2023) and the full-length poetry collection Views From the Red-Light Aquarium (Turning Plow Press, 2026).