Poems

Winner of the 2025 L. E. Phillabaum Poetry Award

Shimmering to the pulse of the unseen, By Stone and Needle circles like a compass needle around the figure of the witch. Catherine Carter concocts a book of secular spells and incantations for engaging with, and meditating upon, a world in which all things are connected, in which symbol slides into literal, spirituality into science, exact observation into lamentation and love.

The poems in By Stone and Needle spin connecting threads between night sweats, witch drownings, creation stories, pedicures, goddesses—and, especially, between miraculously interconnected ecosystems and the forces that threaten them. Speakers encompass personae including lactobacilli bacteria, bodily yeasts, and the classical witch Medea, while elsewhere a contemporary version of the goddess Artemis appears in Appalachia. Carter's poetic vision imbues everyday moments such as putting on a coat, piercing an ear, confronting racism and patriarchy, or eating onion slices with a new definition of magic as "the human thing."