Ellen Wright: Poet, Musician, Teacher

To read Wright’s poems is to enter a world where hyperbole and bad behavior rule. Who says poetry makes nothing happen? In Family Portrait with Oilwell, bilious words, slick with oil, are sweet revenge on a family—and culture—that abused and misused a daughter and granddaughter, yet gave her a rich past to draw on in this satiric romp of a book.
—Sharon Dolin, author of Imperfect Present 

Newkirk Community Garden, 2024

Carroll Gardens 2021

​Writing a Life

My favorite thing about writing is the miracle of creating a poem where previously there was nothing.  Some disturbance in the brain, some growling in the gut wants to find its way into words. It burbles around trying to take on a shape. A struggle ensues. (Only rarely does a poem emerge fully formed and in one piece.) A poem comes to life.  Something is said that previously couldn’t be.
 
By trade I am a musician; my survival doesn’t require verbal acuity. I chugged along for a couple of decades of dumbfounded adulthood until I realized I might have a happier life if I learned to manage my mouth. My intuition suggested writing poetry. It is one decision I have never regretted. From one moment to the next, I never know when an in-your-face flower or some inadvertent act of cruelty may demand its poetic monument. If my poem resonates with a reader’s experience, a second miracle has occurred.

books

Oilwell is a Faustian character in Ellen Wright’s new poetry collection. Geezer Grandpa buys an oil well. Movie nights he feels up his granddaughter while they watch Gigi eat ortolan.... Grandpa, fan of bazooms, flirts with tired waitresses in the Wild West. Enchanted Mommie, vacuums in fairyland; you can hear lederhosen in Daddy’s voice. The leitmotivs of creepy Oilwell and creepy Grandpa seep through these pages.
—Vicki Iorio, author of Not Sorry (Alien Buddha Press)​

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