new york ironweed was selected for the 2025 Ottoline Prize.
new york ironweed’s poems are––through Deutch’s deft magic of a poet’s hand––living beings, as plants made from and with language. These strange, witchy little creatures err without error as they decompose. Energetic and super sonic, the hyper-conscious poems emerge from our shared context of climate and insect crisis, paying care and attention to the plants wildly growing from cracks in concrete. Intentionally "imperfect," the electric poems invite typographical irregularities, mirroring ecological realities. Deutch’s plants-as-poems build environmental architecture through their rank growth.
new york ironweed gives readers a field guide unlike any other: an intimate companion who’s fervently pointing to miraculous, growing things, who shouts “look!” so that the world feels more possible when we do.
