The thing that remains is the knowledge that there is another me, who I do not control, who has the ability to take over my body. There is so much about myself that I will never know.
Fiction — Circuit in Sybil Journal
Fiction — Jumping Out Of Car Practice in Unstamatic Journal
Air whooshed into the car when Brian opened the passenger side door of my ’96 Ford Taurus and stuck his Doc Marten boot out above the moving pavement. Brian’s Doc Martens were hand-me-downs, scuffed and cracked and almost grey with age, the yellow laces laced all the way up and wrapped several times before being tied around Brian’s skinny leg just above the ankle, his cuffed jeans lifting as he stretched one leg out of the door.
Oregon ArtsWatch — Cultural Landscape Part 11
The Cultural Landscape: Part 11
K.B. Dixon’s cultural-portrait series continues with visual artist Marie Watt, classical percussionist Niel DePonte, dancer & choreographer Oluyinka Akinjiola, poet & storyteller Brian S. Ellis, and actor & Portland Revels leader Lauren Bloom Hanover.
OCTOBER 2, 2023
Interview — Abandon Journal Issue #4
An Interview With Brian S. Ellis
by Kimberly Sheridan
October 19, 2022
The poetry of Brian S. Ellis unravels, inverts, investigates, and complicates. His poems are radical koans and invitations to forego common narratives. In a review of Yesterday Won’t Goodbye, Jeanann Verlee writes, “His poems speak with an unbridled urgency yet come to you patient, coy, brimming with wisdom—and acutely aware of their own necessity.”
Fiction — Security in COUNTERCLOCK Journal
Hamish lived on the opposite side of the country from his family, but he had never been on an airplane, he had moved by train. He was a romantic, but this time, there was urgency; his grandfather had died. So Hamish called the airplane company to purchase a ticket which he was told would be at the counter when he went. The airport was so much bigger than Hamish knew.
Interview — Oregon ArtsWatch
Poet’s Q&A: Brian S. Ellis talks slam poetry, storytelling, and branching toward prose
The Portland poet sees his classroom role as more coach than teacher: “I am very good at pumping people up, listening, and helping them execute their vision…. I’m not hitting people with maxims to live by.”
DECEMBER 27, 2021
Book – Against Common Sense
Limit Zero Publications (2023)
Against Common Sense is a collection of poems. Against Common Sense is a collection of poems that thinks that complexity is a form of accuracy—which is to say, a form of honesty—and that simplicity itself is not a virtue; in fact, simplicity has been used many times as a form of violence. The poems in Against Common Sense do not think that there is a type of knowledge that a person can obtain that detracts from said person’s overall ability to think: this is the theory that is invoked when common sense is employed; that it is possible somehow that learning can separate us from ourselves; that learning is a dangerous activity that will leave us with less information than we began with. Against Common Sense is a collection of poems, it is hoped, that thinks. Against Common Sense is a collection of poems.
Book – Pretty Much the Last Hardcore Kid in This Town
Alien Buddha Press (2023)
Pretty Much the Last Hardcore Kid in This Town is a series of interconnected short stories that blur the lines of perspective and identity. Focusing on the same collective of punk rock kids living in the early 2000s New England, each story contains shifts in status, power and self, as characters swap names and personalities, both literal and metaphysical.