Write About an Empty Birdcage - by Elaina M Ellis (Paperback)

About the Book

With an ironic swish of the skirt, Elaina M. Ellis has delivered a sweetly strange first collection of poems. Reinventing femininity with each teasing line-break, Ellis pulls sexuality from form, and vulnerability from meter. By turns playful, blunt, and prayerful, Write About an Empty Birdcage documents the painful end of a romantic relationship; revels in the budding of new desire; and ultimately allows hope to climb quietly in through the back window. The poems which explicitly explore identity -- femaleness, Jewishness, queerness -- do so with a critique of power that blends humor, bloodied confession, and a reverence for tension. Ellis is a new poet to watch out for, neither belonging to the full-open swing of spoken word, nor to the inaccessibility of academia: the sonnet is a torch song, the prose poem is a fist. Here you find all the fleshy reveal of the truth, without the ease of nakedness. Write About an Empty Birdcage is a book of poetry that is worth the work of undressing.

Book Synopsis

Write An Empty Birdcage is an unorthodox instruction manual for the broken hearted. Ellis sets out to trace the lineage of various personal disasters. These poems explicitly explore identity, queerness, Jewish heritage, and embodied femininity. They do so with a critique of power that blends humor, the mess of confession, and a reverence for tension.

Review Quotes

Elaina M. Ellis has a voice that cuts through wool. Rich in sound and sense, meaning and madness, she signals and signifies. Her imagery comes from a place of truth and her people sweat and breathe. Hers is a talent that can set the world on fire.
-Jenny Factor, author of Unraveling at the Name

How very lucky we are to have a poet who can write and say with beauty and conviction so many parts of life and love that people tell us are bad or wrong. I'm better off for reading and re-reading Ms. Ellis' work, and my guess is you will be better off too.
-Kate Bornstein, author of Hello, Cruel W

About the Author

Elaina M. Ellis full-time writes, teaches, and produces poetry in Seattle. She is the founder of TumbleMe Productions, a vehicle for multi-media artistic collaborations. Ellis is published in print and online, including Push Magazine, Awaking Consciousness Magazine, and Muzzle Magazine, and has been featured as a performance poet on many local and national stages. She will earn a Masters in Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles in 2011.