[5][6] Shortly after being released from prison the first time, he published his best-known poetry collection, Poems of Resistance from British Guiana (1954).
In October 1953, following the British government's declaration of a State of Emergency in Guyana, he was arrested and detained without charge at a US airbase in Timehri on suspicion that he was "spreading dissension", along with Eusi Kwayana and Cheddi Jagan.
[17][18][19] While detained, Carter took part in a one-month hunger strike, beginning on 23 November, organised by the detainees as a protest against the injustices of the government and their being held, indefinitely, without charge.
[7] Concerned about the way in which the PNC government was developing, he resigned from this position, and indeed from governmental politics, in November 1970, remarking that he wished to live "simply as a poet, remaining with the people".
[25] From 1970 to 1978, he returned to Booker once again, resigning for the last time in 1978 to become a lecturer in creative writing and artist in residence at the University of Guyana.
[23] Politically, his sympathy lay with the Working People's Alliance of Eusi Kwayana and Walter Rodney during this time, although he never became a party member.
[14] In 1992 Carter took part in a Guyanese Writers Tour, in the UK, with Wilson Harris, Fred D'Aguiar and Grace Nichols.
[29] At the Live from Lincoln Center jazz concert for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, Danny Glover quoted some lines of Carter's, bringing him to public attention in North America for the first time in the 21st century.