Marilyn Bushman-Carlton, poet and author, was born in Lehi, Utah on November 18, 1945. She received a BA from the University of Utah (as a mother of five) in 1989. She currently lives in Draper, Utah.
She has published three poetry books: on keeping things small (Signature Books, 1995); Cheat Grass, (1999), which won the Pearle M. Olsen Book Publication/USPS Poet of the Year award; and Her Side of It, (Signature Books, 2010), winner of the Association of Mormon Letters Poetry Award (2010). A chapbook version of Her Side of It was a finalist in the Comstock Review’s 2005 Jess Bryce Niles Chapbook competition. She has also authored a book of children’s poems, Pulchritudinous and Other Ways to Say Beautiful, for her sixteen grandchildren, (Lulu Press, 2015).
Her prose includes a biography, Worthy: A Young Woman from a Background of Poverty and Abuse Falls Prey to a Polygamous Cult (Lulu Press, 2016), a finalist for the 11th Annual Indie Excellence Award.
Other awards include a prize (1997) and a grant (1996) from the Utah Arts Council, for whom she was an Artist-in-Residence, traveling throughout Utah to teach poetry in elementary, middle, and senior high schools (1996-2012); and awards for individual poems from the Comstock Review, the Ledge, The Sow’s Ear, BYU Studies; Utah State and National Poetry Societies, Red Butte Gardens, UTA Poetry on the Bus, and others.
Individual poems appear in Dove Song: Heavenly Mother in Mormon Poetry; Fire in the Pasture; Twenty-First Century Mormon Poets; Discoveries: Two Centuries of Poems by Mormon Women: SLCC Anthology (2018 and 2020); Utah Sings (Vols. 7, 8, & 9); and other anthologies.
A poem, “Voluntary Poverty,” was set to music and performed at Brigham Young University in the program, “Discoveries, Two Centuries of Poems by Mormon Women" (March 2004) and at the annual meeting of the Mormon History Association (2004).
Works
Bibliography
- Pulchritudinous and Other Ways to Say Beautiful (Lulu Press, 2015)
- Her Side of It (Signature Books, 2010)
- Cheat Grass (Utah State Poetry Society, 1999)
- on keeping things small (Signature Books, 1995)
- Worthy: A Young Woman from a Background of Poverty and Abuse Falls Prey to a Polygamous Cult (Lulu Press, 2016)
