CAZENOVIA — On Sunday, Jan. 21, local poet, writer, and content creator Brynn Ellen celebrated the release of her first book, “Poems About You,” with a launch event at the Lincklaen House.
The poetry collection, which Ellen described as “a scrapbook of love lost and found,” was published by Tiny Newt Press, a female-founded hybrid book publisher based in Buffalo.
The launch event included a toast to the book’s release, a light brunch spread, a reading of selections from the collection, and a book signing for guests who purchased copies.
Ellen, who is known locally as Brynn Semeraro, is a 2004 graduate of Cazenovia High School and a former youth services assistant at the Cazenovia Public Library.
She currently resides just outside Cazenovia in Chittenango and works as a site coordinator for the Book Buddies early literacy program with the United Way.
Ellen has been writing since she was a child. While majoring in education and English at SUNY Oswego, she took several creative writing classes and had a poem selected for publication in the school’s literary journal, “Great Lake Review.”
In 2022, on her 36th birthday, she decided to start a poetry writing project as a form of daily journaling.
“I wrote so much that following year and a half that publishing seemed like the next obvious step,” she said.
She connected with her publisher, who was a former acquaintance from college, on Instagram.
As the pair went through all her material, they identified love as a connecting theme that many people would relate to.
“I had lots of poems around that theme to pull from too,” said Ellen. “I could probably do two or three more whole collections on that theme.”
She started pulling the “Poems About You” collection together in June 2023 and submitted it in December 2023.
The resulting book, which the publisher’s website praises as “an ode to unrequited love, fleeting romance, love lost, and everything in between,” is 140 pages long and contains about 100 poems.
“My publisher has become my dear friend through this process,” said Ellen. “She’s a master editor, a perfectionist, and she makes the whole process painless. It would have been impossible for me to do this on my own.”
According to Ellen, choosing her favorite poem from the collection would be as impossible as choosing a favorite child. However, there are several works that she finds particularly impactful. One such poem is “A Darling Dares to Dream.”
“It is an allusion to the Peter Pan story on the surface, a commentary on the star-crossed love between Peter and Wendy,” she said. “But it’s also an allegory for relationships that are just impossible to sustain. There is a stanza that reads, ‘But Peter can’t stay, and Wendy can’t leave, and a fairy can’t fix this, no matter how hard you believe.’ Every time I get to that line, I choke. No one believes in fairies or love more than I do, and the fact that that still isn’t enough is heartbreaking sometimes.”
Ellen is currently curating a follow-up collection and planning a novel for the coming years.
“At every turn, I plan to make Cazenovia the first stop on my book tours and the launchpad for every project,” she said.
To learn more about Ellen and her debut work, visit brynnellenpoet.squarespace.com or tinynewtpress.org/books, or follow her at brynnellen_poet on Instagram.
