Elline Lipkin is the author of the new poetry collection Girl in a Forest, which focuses on the character Gretel from the Hansel and Gretel story. Her other books include The Errant Thread.
Q: Over how long a period did you write the poems in your new collection?
A: Unlike past projects, I was surprised by how quickly these poems emerged. I wrote my first Gretel poem during the pandemic and then more seemed to quickly fly out. I tried to “write through” the characters in the tale for about two years and then started putting the collection together.
When I started down this path (so to speak) I was almost embarrassed by the sense that writing poems on a fairy tale was trite, but the more I looked, the more I realized fairy tales are an evergreen source because the tropes and archetypes they explore are so resonant.
I suddenly saw references to this tale everywhere — in films, plays, TV series, artwork. I recently went to a modern dance performance that used this tale as a springboard for commentary about family loss and politics. It was encouraging to realize what a powerful springboard this story is and the poems seemed to pour out.
Q: Why did you choose to revisit the Hansel and Gretel story, and what does the story mean to you?
A: During the pandemic, when we were all feeling so isolated and lost, I was reading fairy tales to my son when it came to me what an archetypical time we were living through. It seemed as if we were all looking for breadcrumbs that might lead us out of a very dark and bewildering time.
My mother was also not doing well, health-wise, and I was missing her terribly when it was hard to travel. All of that converged as I began to consider the roles that girls and women circulate between — girl, woman, wife, mother, crone — alongside how families redefine themselves when children leave and in the wake of a parent’s death.
The characters began to feel very iconic to me — the child who separates from a parent, the anguished mother who knows death means leaving her child, and the witch or crone who exists outside the roles of wife or mother.
In my academic life I write about Girls’ Studies which holds central that the experience of girlhood is distinct from “childhood studies.” The more I thought about Gretel the more I saw her as embodying so many of the inherent contradictions preteen and teenage girls hold in tandem.
I began to ask questions about her role — was she a heroine or a murderer? Traumatized or triumphant? The more I wrote, the more I found to explore which seemed both ancient and modern, iconic and ubiquitous.
Q: The poet Victoria Chang called the collection “a book of accumulations, and propulsions.” What do you think of that assessment?
A: I think she was addressing how the weave of the manuscript functions like a chord, or a musical fugue, with themes that repeat in varying keys or converge in a chorus through different character’s voices.
A tone or undercurrent emerges from this blending which creates the ambience of the book. Details in one section are revisited in another and take on new importance as the narrative deepens.
I’m offering my take on the original Grimm tale but also propelling Gretel forward. We see her as an adult, newly understanding mother-loss when she becomes a mother herself, the development of the witch from young beauty to exiled outcast, hear the house speaking as she burns, then move to a non-fairy tale-specific place which picks up these themes again.
I think of how light refracts inside a prism as parallel to how narrative bends throughout the book and offers shadow, clarity, and depth.
Q: How was the collection’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: I can’t remember the moment the title came to me, but it grew to represent not only Gretel, lost in the woods with her brother, but the iconic figure of the adolescent girl lost in a maze of uncertainties and self-doubt.
I began to see Gretel as an archetype for that emergent time in adolescence and to consider other characters’ archetypal roles — the witch deep within the woods shunned by society for not conforming, a mother returned to earth still yearning to give care, a bewildered father who casts his children out.
These female figures seemed part of a triangulation of roles that most women move through, but starts with girlhood, and for the first time, being in a lost place where you have to figure things out for yourself.
At heart, I think this book explores what it means for Gretel, as an adolescent girl, to come into her own power.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’ve had a hard time working this summer — we lost our house in the Eaton Fire and for the first six months of the year I was in shock and had to focus on “recovery” work.
But I’ve been furtively making notes for a new manuscript idea. I don’t want to say too much, but it explores the history of color, how moments form a “coin” of memory, and the idea of allowing what is on the other side of a scrim to be seen.
There is an element, as in this book, of using a palimpsest to lay new meaning on top of other ones.
Q: I’m so sorry about the loss of your house…
Is there anything else we should know about the book and your work?
A: I love hearing from readers! Feel free to connect with me through my website www.ellinelipkin.com where I’ll be posting about upcoming readings and events. I keep my Substack, The Proem, free because I like to share literary news and opportunities with others.
For two years, I served my adopted home town, Altadena, as Poet Laureate, editing The Altadena Poetry Review and organizing community events. In The Proem I also include updates about “fire recovery” both for myself and for my beloved town.
I’ll also give a shout out to the anthology The Poets’ Grimm: 20th Century Poetry from Grimm Fairy Tales, edited by Jeanne Marie Beaumont and Claudia Carlson.
Eons ago, as a graduate student I was thrilled to have my first “real” publication in this anthology (based on a fairy tale I researched in one of my classes, “The Maiden Without Hands”). Pulling it out again made me realize the seed for this book was planted way back when and how resonant these tales remain.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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