Laton Carter’s first collection of poems, Leaving (University of Chicago Press), was selected as the winner of the 2005 Stafford-Hall Oregon Book Award. In his judge’s citation, poet Mark Doty stated:

“The  scrupulously observant poems in Laton Carter’s Leaving are deeply interested in human gestures, in those small, self-revealing moments when we think we’re unobserved: contemplating ourselves in the rearview mirror on the way to work, daydreaming in front of the cashier’s conveyor at the grocery store. Carter is fascinated by work, and reading him reminds us how rare the subject is in our poetry: his attention moves again and again to the ways people hold themselves on the way there or the way back, how we’re shaped and defined by jobs and the lack of them. Carefully controlled, elegantly shaped, these refreshing poems are oddly moving in their minimalist gestures. They’re the work of an idiosyncratic and lively mind, and this first book — already an achievement — hums with promise.”

Carter’s work has been published in, or is forthcoming from, Ploughshares, Chicago Review, Northwest Review, and Faultline, among others. His poem “The Geese” was selected as part of the nationwide Poetry in Motion project, and will appear on buses and trains in the Portland, Oregon metro transit system. A regional PBS feature on this project (“Oregon Art Beat”) will air in the spring of 2007.  Carter’s second manuscript of poems, entitled Patience, is forthcoming.