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 Coney Island, New York poet and publisher 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.
 

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Véronique Darwin

Véronique Darwin has published stories in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern and PRISM International and was runner-up for the 2024 Austin Clarke Prize in Literary Excellence. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph, where she completed a mentorship with Sheila Heti. Her humour pieces and essays about writing have appeared in Geist, carte blanche, and Porter House Review, and she has written book reviews for EVENT, The Fiddlehead, and the Literary Review of Canada. She writes, teaches, and makes theatre with friends in the mountain town of Rossland, British Columbia. Mom Camp is her first book.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
It’s my first book, so I’d say it changed it entirely. Writers who have published books always advise you not to expect your first book to change your life, but I’m going to let it.

2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
While I’ve tried to connect with poetry, it’s prose’s formal continuity—either in fiction and non-fiction—that most resembles the way I experience consciousness, which is what I think of as writing and reading: the delivery of a consciousness through text.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
Projects build up and on to each other like competing vines and I’m the house. It’s hard to see from the window but sometimes I go for a walk around the perimeter.

4 - Where does a work of prose usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
I’m excited to not be able to answer this, because I think each project need its own process. Like each person has a personality, each project can only be itself, and so I’m constantly meeting it where it’s at, probing gently.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
Yes, I’d love to. I’m always starting up a writing group or collaborating on a musical.

I’ve lived in a small town for quite some time, but am moving to Vancouver, where I hope to be a part of regular communities of writers interacting with each other and their readers.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
I’m very curious about narrative distance: point of view and how it can be better manipulated to reflect and examine consciousness, which is the great mystery of being human.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
Writers are reflectors, predictors and collectors. We have to be a little selfish, reclusive and observant while also engaged and meddling. At least, this is my personality and I’m a writer.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
My experience working with Leigh Nash at Assembly Press was phenomenal. Every edit was a carefully positioned query that opened up a window into the soul of the work. That being said, I think you need to learn to be your own editor until you know what your project is.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
My dad used to walk by me reading and tell me to look up from the page every once in a while. He meant it literally—I’ve since continued to progressively lose my eyesight—but I took it figuratively.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (short stories to essays)? What do you see as the appeal?
I find it easy and generative, though this makes me a little bit of a squirelly writer. I store nuts here and there and run around shouting about it. In the end, I’m trying to cultivate an energy that allows me to both sit down and write and also send off what I’ve written, and if it’s going to be by losing my chill, so be it.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I’ve been a full-time teacher for the past decade, and it took me a while to figure out how to make that work. It does right now: I wake up at 5am and write (or do writerly things) for an hour and a half. Then I try to return to the desk or the work at some point in the evening. I’m quitting teaching so we’ll see what happens.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I turn to books that exist already. I also turn to my notebooks. Or I just get my fingers going on the keys or my hand wrapped around a pen. It’s always in me, somewhere.

13 - What was your last Hallowe'en costume?
Oh! I hosted one half of a progressive Halloween party, where your costume had to evolve between houses. Three friends and I were construction workers who turned into the bejewelled Louvre robbers. It was a timely costume.

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
I’d actually like to say no. Of course the world influences me, but I’m writing a book, and I couldn’t agree with McFadden more.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Miriam Toews and Sheila Heti are two Canadian writers who have taught me, through their books (and Sheila’s mentorship!) so much of what writing means to me. I’m always finding new crushes but I’m loyal to those authors I found early.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Write a novel! Like, not a fragmented one that is also an interconnected short story collection.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
I’m going through it right now: what’s not a teacher? Then I think about a college instructor or university professor, but that’s a teacher. I’d like to be a student for a while (but that’s a teacher).

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Books! I want to make what I love. I want to give back and see my book cuddled up on the shelf.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I’m reading Solvej Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume series the day they publish in English—we’re now at 4 of 7 volumes and they’re not slowing down. I’m trying to watch 100 films this year but am at a scant 20 and it’s May. My recent favourite was Peter Hujar’s Day (Ira Sachs 2025). It changed my journalling practice.

20 - What are you currently working on?
That novel! And also an inside-out text about my abandoned first novel.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;