12 or 20 (second series) questions with Deborah Ellis

Deborah Ellis is the author of many books of fiction and non-fiction for young people, often on the topic of war and what it does to children.  Her latest book is a collection of short stories called Go.  She lives in Simcoe, Ontario, with her wife and their dog.

How did your first book change your life? I had written many unpublishable books before Looking for X was accepted and published.  It gave me the sense that maybe I could learn how to do this mysterious thing.  Also at that time, an adult non-fiction book I'd done came out - Women of the Afghan War - which was interviews with Afghan women in the refugee camps and elsewhere.  

How did you come to fiction first? Fiction was always what I wanted to write. It is what I love to read.  When I was a kid, a friend of my parents was friends with the great Jean Little. I received Jean's books as Christmas presents and was blown away that someone actually knew her, that she was a real person.

How long does it take to start any particular writing project? I usually start with a question - what would it be like to be this person in this situation.  My beginnings take much longer these days.  It takes more time for me to figure out what the story is and how to get into it.  And I go through many, many drafts.

Where does a work of prose usually begin for you? Usually with a question, as I said above. Sometimes with a news story or something I've read or heard in passing.

Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? When I was doing school talks, it was wonderful to meet with children who read and loved my books or who read and hated my books - as long as they were reading and formed opinions! I wouldn't say that public readings are part of the creative process, but they are part of the job, if I'm lucky enough to be invited.

Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing?  I'm usually trying to figure out why we continue to behave badly when we know all too well what the result will be, as well as what will it take for us to just be kind to each other.

What do you see as the current role of the writer in the larger culture? I think it is the same as it has always been, to both hold up a mirror and to put forward possibilities. When we write for children, we also need to give them a sense that they have the power to get out of or at least survive a bad situation.

Do you find the process of working with an editor difficult or essential? Absolutely essential. I have been lucky - most of my books were edited by Shelley Tanaka, an incredibly talented woman who is not shy about saying the work is bad and needs to be done again!

What is the best piece of advice you've heard? That people will survive when you don't do what they want you to do.

How easy is it for you to move between genres, fiction to non-fiction? Easy. It's all stories.

What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep? Typical day? All days start with a long walk with our dog, then coffee with my wife then getting down to work.  Up and down with chores and other things.  

When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn for inspiration? Usually activity - cleaning the house, walking the dog, stuff like that.  Sometimes browsing the library.  

What fragrance reminds you of home? Lilac - I used to build forts in the lilac trees in the scrubland behind our house when I was a kid.

David W. McFadden once said that books come from books. Are there other forms that influence your work? Books absolutely come from books - also from life, from memory, from art, from theatre, from the sky.

What other writers or writings are important for your work or simply your life outside your work?  I like to read books about new ideas or ways of looking at things I've never thought about before. We are lucky that more books are available in translation now, so we get to read voices from around the world.

What would you like to do that you haven't yet done? Travel more, learn more, have more conversations.

If you could pick any other occupation, what would it be? I would like to travel with a carnival. Or maybe be a funeral director.

What made you write, as opposed to doing something else? Writing was always it. There wasn't anything else.

What was the last great book you read? Upward Bound by Woody Brown - it takes place inside an adult day program.  Incredible.

What are you currently working on? A couple of young adult pieces and a couple of adult pieces. Time will tell if they are any good.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Amanda Deutch, New York Ironweed

 

wild anemone

her

her me

let it go

spftly on the

cement

a ta[estr

 

loetf

bvehh

pppajjd

light bulb

ljje

with

within

Winner of the Ottoline Prize and published through Fence Books is New York City poet Amanda Deutch’s full-length debut, the book-length collage New York Ironweed (Astoria NY: Fence Books, 2026), a title that follows an array of poetry chapbooks (including a version of this particular manuscript via above/ground press). As the author writes as part of the notes at the back of the collection: “All of the poems in new york ironweed take their titles from names of New York City weeds, wildflowers, native plants, and trees. The poems began during the new moon in January 2023.” New York Ironweed presents itself as forty-eight clipped lyric assemblages each named for a different plant, with poem-titles such as “common crown vetch,” “purslane,” “seaside goldenrod” and “hellebore.” Through Deutch’s poem-list of plants, language bleeds and shimmers, offering delightful collisions of sound and meaning while referencing climate and environmental response. “you know what they // say // thy sy // dontcha?” she writes, as part of “field bindweed,” “plant the seed // who cares // on the television // they all talk // and so do you [.]” There’s a delightful way her poems run down each page (enough that I would be quite curious to hear how some of these poems might be to hear), a thread of sorts, pulled, sometimes into a visual garble, one that almost reads akin to hitting the wrong keys while sending a text. Through Deutch, the suggestion of error remains the correct response. “once went wondering // oit om the woods,” begins “blanket flower,” “orange / hellow // wht an automatic // corsage [.]”

There’s that infamous line by New York School poet Frank O’Hara (1926-1966), from the title poem of his 1957 collection Meditations in an Emergency: “One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes—I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life.” Whereas Deutch is very much a New York poet, or really, a Coney Island poet, closer to the manner of Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919-1921) through working to articulate a particular landscape, Deutch does through the foundation of the foliage itself, entirely the opposite of O’Hara. The foundations of her poems are the plants themselves, with human activity forcing its own way through to interfere. As part of the poem “eastern redbud” writes:

when the rain so

doesn’t stop

and you are on an island

archipelago

not of our imagination

and you have lived on an

other island with no radio

but similar weather

with another I

the sea was not ours

not mine

at all when I was over there

but here it is

now

This is very much a botanical book—of direct responses to plants via climate, language and sound riffs—very different than the garden-specific Garden Physic by Saskatchewan poet Sylvia Legris (New Directions, 2021) [see my review of such here], Ottawa poet Monty Reid’s twelve-month cycle, The Garden (Ottawa ON: Chaudiere Books, 2014), or Montreal poet Stephanie Bolster’s examination of formal gardens in A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth (London ON: Brick Books, 2011) [see my review of such here]. One might even see Deutch’s language comparable more to the enormous play across the late Canadian poet bpNichol’s posthumously-produced organ music: parts of an autobiography (Windsor ON: Black Moss Press, 2012) [see my review of such here], writing poems from a list of subject-based poem-titles that circle a central core, while utilizing that title purely as poem-anchor, allowing the pieces themselves enormous lyric freedom. Across short bursts, Deutch articulates the ways in which plants and human activity connect and intersect across the synaptic space of narrative, while just as much purposefully mangling narrative via forms of visual sound. “sometimes all // and everything you // can do is,” she writes, as part of “white turtlehead,” “open your palms // and say thank // you [.]” Certainly, one can make a comparison to Legris’ title, but this almost seems quite directly a botanical book, akin to those Canadian author and naturalist Catherine Parr Trail (1802-1899) used to produce, although worked through a clipped and even boiled-down lyric blend of sound, staccato and visual play. “stretch marks. streets. cracks. // so many 90s // taxis // wack // and then scarcity // until right now,” begins the poem “purslane.” Is this a book one might be able to use as a field guide while wandering through a cavalcade of New York City foliage? I would say so, yes.

field horsetail

don’t tell me

to be someone’s mother

someone’s wife

I scrub my own pots

since the dinosaurs

I eat what I want

and look

see?

can you?

this is more than enough

I say that without edges

with softness

and surrender

sunning my face

 

Ongoing notes: the ottawa small press book fair (part one, : Jason Camlot and Stuart Ross, + Monty Reid,

[Manahil Bandukwala at the Brick Books table; Leigh Nash and Andrew Faulkner at the Assembly Press table] Another small press book fair! Do you remember my notes from last fall on the ottawa small press book fair [see parts one, two] or my combined notes on Toronto's TIFA Small Press Market/Meet the Presses’ Indie Lit Market [see parts one, two, three, four]? So much small press! And our next Ottawa fair will be Saturday, November 14th at the Tom Brown Arena, so be sure to mark your calendars. Did you know there’s a zine fair coming up in Sherbrooke, Quebec on July 4th? (a handful of issues of Touch the Donkey will be available there gratis, by the way) And apparently there’s another Fisher Library Small Press Fair in Toronto on September 19^th!

Ottawa/Cobourg ON/Montreal QC: Jason Camlot and Stuart Ross have been working a curious sequence of chapbook-length response projects (all part of a larger manuscript-in-progress, “THE SHOOKY SESSIONS (A Litany),” a handful of such appearing recently in print [including titles through above/ground press, № Press and Vallum’s Chapbook Series], one of the latest being Shooky Session 4 (with allergies) (Ottawa ON: Apt. 9 Press, June 2026), subtitled “Paul Celan, Selections / 11 December 2023 / Sarah Burgoyne’s Place.” Each chapbook-length project, it would seem, is composed as a collaborative response to a poetry title pulled off a bookshelf at random, this one being Paul Celan’s Selections (University of California Press, 2005), edited by Pierre Joris. As the note at the back of the chapbook offers: “This chapbook presents poems written during the fourth of seven listening poetry sessions that Stuart Ross and Jason Camlot held between December 5, 2022, and December 18, 2024.” With the other prompt-titles in the sequence, Celan is an interesting selection, given the work can’t help but be a richly generative text. The notion of the “response text” is one that runs the length and breadth of literature, including what one might term straight translation to more abstract translations, from bpNichol’s Translating Translating Apollinaire to Erín Moure’s Sheep’s Vigil by a Fervent Person (Anansi, 2001) to more recent mis-translations by Montreal poet Hugh Thomas. Not that a response is the same thing as translation, or even mis-translation, but I would say the ideas are certainly related. Siblings, perhaps.

As well, Ross is one of but a handful of writers (I would include Gary Barwin in such as well) who seem to be constantly, even perpetually, pushing the boundaries of their own comfort and possibility through projects, including collaboration, all of which can’t help but feed into either author’s solo work. I am very curious to see this eventual published collection, and the way each chapbook-length project might play off each other, possibly. As the poem begins:

The divers are crowned by halos.
They are not brainless,
nor are they flames of vegetable.
Let’s dance around my eyes,
celebrate my glorious decapitation,
my glistening kisser.

Ottawa ON/Grand Lake NB: In case you were unaware, New Brunswick poet russell carisse [see my recent interview with carisse here] has started a chapbook press, sider0xylon press, which debuted at this most recent ottawa small press book fair. One of the first titles is the sequence OPERATIVES by Monty Reid, hand-sewn and produced “on a 1929 LCSmith & Corona Standard #8-12,” each copy individually typed and numbered in an edition of fifty copies. Throughout this ten-part sequence, Reid invokes a slow and considered lyric unfurling that works perfectly in this format, each short section on its own page, allowing each line to properly absorb. As the opening piece, titled “Brush Pass,” reads:

You never know what you’ll be given.

You might not feel the slightest touch
as the messenger passes. 

You never know where it came from
although you suspect a source. 

Your job is not to know. You are the form
the message takes, every time.