Mary Norbert Körte

Mary Norbert Körte (or Korte or Koerte) (1933/1934 – November 14, 2022) was an American poet associated with the Beat movement. A former Catholic Religious Sister from the San Francisco Bay area, in the 1960s she became a poet, teacher and social activist. Her published work includes several volumes of poetry. She died on November 14, 2022, aged 88.

Life Early life Körte grew up in the hills near Oakland and Berkeley, east of San Francisco Bay. Born into a conservative and deeply religious family, she was enrolled for her high school studies in the prestigious St. Rose Academy in San Francisco, run by the Dominican Sisters of San Rafael. At the age of 17, she felt that the way of life the Sisters followed would provide her an escape from the privileged life of her family, and entered that religious congregation in 1951. During that period she was occupied with translating Vergil’s Georgics into iambic pentameter and studying classical texts and formal poetry. At the same time, however, she took notice of the antiwar protests taking place throughout the country which she supported.

In 1965, Körte was allowed to attend the influential Berkeley Poetry Conference where she was minor sensation due to her wearing of her Dominican religious habit to the event. As result of her experience at the conference, which was a gathering which would become known as a watershed moment in the history of American poetry, she came to know and became greatly influenced by readings by Allen Ginsberg, Jack Spicer, Lew Welch and other poets of that era. She began to write poetry about a range of topics reflecting the social upheaval of the times. In this she formed a friendship with Brother Antoninus, a Dominican lay brother also in the Bay area, who was also a poet struggling with the place of poetry in their society. She began to identify with the Beat community of the city and to assist poor poets living in Haight-Ashbury, bringing them food from the convent. In 1972, she moved again, becoming caretaker of woodland property near Mendocino in northern California. She eventually bought the property, supporting herself by teaching at a nearby reservation school. She continued to write poetry, and she became active in the environmental movement, including Save the Redwoods.