Introducing Collective Member Ellis ElLiot

Ten dedicated writer poets comprise the Old Scratch Short Form Collective, with the goal of working with the Devil’s Party Press, a small independent publisher, to bring to fruition the concept of publishing chapbooks of poetry and short form prose under the imprint Old Scratch Press.

To launch, we’ll be introducing the contributing editors, member of the collective, one by one each week.

MEET ELLIS ELLIOT

Ellis Elliott is a writer, ballet teacher, and facilitator of online writing groups called Bewilderness Writing. She has a blended family of six grown sons and splits her time between Juno Beach, FL., and the mountains of Crozet, VA. She has an MFA from Queens University, is a contributing writer for the Southern Review of Books, and an editor/workshop teacher for The Dewdrop contemplative journal. She has been published in Signal Mountain Review, Ignation Literary Magazine, Literary Mama, OPEN: Journal of Arts and Letter, Plainsongs Poetry Magazine/Award Poem, Sierra Nevada Review, Women of Appalachia Project Anthology, Delmarva Review, The Rail, Spotlong Review, Euphony Journal, and others. 

Old Scratch Press is delighted to be publishing Ellis’s first chapbook, a collection of poems entitled A Break in the Field. In her poetic statement about herself on her Bewilderness Writing website, Ellis says,

“I am a perennial student of nature, inner realms, and the wisdom of the body, and write to bear witness and disentangle the world as I perceive it.”

Approximately fifty pages in length, the poems in A Break in the Field grapple with the concept of how human perception can change, depending on the vantage point. Target month for the book’s release will be June 2023.

In the upcoming weeks we’ll be introducing the other members of the group
Alan Bern
Anthony Doyle
Gabby Gilliam
Janet Holmes Uchendu
Morgan Golladay
Nadja Maril
R. David Fulcher
Robert Fleming
Virginia Watts

And we’ll be sharing favorite poems and pieces we admire along with writing prompts, thoughts and musing about poetry, short form prose and other hybrid forms.

Have something you’d like to read about in this space, let us know. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

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New ways of seeing

My name is Ellis Elliott and I am proud to be a part of the Old Scratch Poetry Collective. I recently read Ben Weakley’s first poetry collection, Heat + Pressure. Ben is an Army veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan. I am not one normally drawn to books or movies about war, because it is much easier to keep something at a safe distance, to pretend it’s not there, if we do not engage with it. But poetry has a particular way of helping us see with new eyes, and this time the writer is bringing us along with him on patrol with his infantry, at home with his young son, watching the events of Jan. 6, and back to his childhood, when war meant a game to be played. This collection is visceral as well as lyrical, and will linger long after you’ve read the last poem.

Field Dressing 

The silent doe stiffened in her bed of leaves,

where moments ago she fell, panting.

Her last breath rattled.

Life passed from nutbrown eyes

into damp January morning.

The snow wrapped us in a womb of silence.

My frost-tipped fingers gripped tight

around the stained handle of a buck-knife,

the curved edge trembling.

Warm against my back, my father’s hand.

Soft against my ear, my father’s voice—

Careful, son. Cut gently.

We eat what we kill.

We honor the animal.

We honor the dead who gave us life.

Boys like me are not made with words enough for this. 

                                    -Ben Weakley

Welcome to Old Scratch Press

Old Scratch Press, specializing in poetry and short form prose is an imprint of the Devil’s Party Press, LLC family. We’ve set up this website, administered by members of the Old Scratch Short Form Collective, to share our love for poetry and short form prose with the global community.