The Great Right-Here by Ellyn Touchette

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The Great Right-Here
by Ellyn Touchette
Official Publication Date: August 2019
Trade Paper; 112 pages; 4.37" x 7"
ISBN 978-1-938753-34-3
POETRY

Back Cover Copy for The Great Right-Here

The Great Right-Here chases Ellyn Touchette—unlikely protagonist and unreliable narrator—through the psychotic break that nearly ended her early twenties. The sometimes vibrant, always raw poems in this debut collection chronicle a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, a whole lot of therapy, and more than one agonizing coming-to-Jesus, culminating in the moment our favorite anti-hero finally makes the choice to venture into the Great Beyond—at a much later date.

Praise for The Great Right-Here

“Ellyn Touchette’s The Great Right-Here is as clever as it is raw. There were moments when I felt a mirror being shown to me through her poems. Jarring. Necessary. Radically honest. With this collection, Touchette establishes herself as a voice for those of us with Bipolar, and we’re lucky to have her. Cannot wait to see what comes next!” —Mary Lambert, author of Shame Is an Ocean I Swim Across

“The voice in Ellyn Touchette’s The Great Right-Here is thick with grit and urgent with the ignition of a story that needs telling. Her speaker navigates the uncertain waters of coming of age as a young woman in a patriarchal landscape, managing mental illness, and the messy work of love. The quick pacing of Touchette’s lucid imagery and her parsimony of language amplify the forward momentum of the collection. Her speaker moves from a place of isolating angst and despair to something like hope, and I think that’s a journey we all need to revisit from time to time in some intrinsic, unshakable way. With this fiercely vulnerable and meticulously crafted collection, Touchette has given her reader a real gift: a belief in buoyancy.” —Stevie Edwards, Author of Sadness Workshop

“Touchette’s poems invent themselves from obsession and tenderness in equal measure, conjuring needling surreality from the dance between meds and mania. Neurodivergence walks into a bar and leaves a trail of paper napkin confessions in her wake. Illness here is spectral: a horse, a bat, a boat, a god, an escape. Love is a specter as well, but Touchette keeps raising a glass to toast it anyway.” —Emily O’Neill, author of Pelican and a falling knife has no handle