Cultural upbringing inspires Greenfield author

ERNIE BRILL

ERNIE BRILL

By AMALIA WOMPA

For the Recorder

Published: 10-21-2024 11:59 AM

Modified: 10-21-2024 12:07 PM


GREENFIELD — Although local author Ernie Brill doesn’t owe his work to just one stage of his life, he does pull much of his inspiration from his cultural upbringing.

Brill, 79, grew up in Brooklyn, New York, with a Jewish family in a hectic housing project post-World War II. His poetry book “Journeys of Voices & Choices,” which will be the subject of a talk at the Greenfield Public Library on Wednesday at 6:30 p.m., focuses on themes involving the Holocaust, cultural ignorance, adolescence and international issues. In addition to his work in poetry in fiction being published around the world, Brill has been featured in a few literary podcasts.

Although Brill began writing when he was 12 years old, he first found public success in San Francisco, where he began to involve himself with student activism while pursuing an English degree at San Francisco State College. It was during this time that Brill found himself involved in the 1968-1969 student strike for greater minority representation on campus that lasted five months, making it the longest student strike in the history of American higher education.

“We won our demands for Black studies and we won a whole school for ethnic studies. We won after around 700 arrests and a police-occupied campus. It was quite amazing. You had a really amazing coalition. We stuck together,” Brill said, thinking back to one of the most defining moments of his life that became one of the inspirations for his budding career.

In 1980, Brill published, “I Looked Over Jordan: And Other Stories,” which offers perspectives on hospital life. It was then that Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, an iconic couple in American stage life history, took notice of Brill and offered to turn one of his stories into a playlet. This recognition led to Brill eventually accepting a job offer as an English teacher at Northampton High School, where he prioritized introducing his students to new literary voices.

One of Brill’s favorite lesson plans was to have students write poems focusing on someone other than themselves, which he said allowed them to think from a more worldly perspective.

“I had some success when I taught in Northampton High School in bringing books from other parts of the world to their curriculum,” Brill said. “It was a pretty conservative school and I was hired to make it more multicultural. My real triumph was having a month-long unit on Middle Eastern literature.”

The act of reading — specifically reading books that were written by people from different backgrounds and experiences — is a lifestyle that Brill has followed heavily, with some of his favorite authors originating from Africa, South America and eastern Europe.

Article continues after...

Yesterday's Most Read Articles

Two housing development plans emerge for Leverett/Amherst Kittredge estate
Newton School principal announces resignation, effective Nov. 27
Victims in fallen tree incident in Orange sue property owner
My Turn: Northfield shouldn’t take step backward
Two teen boys injured in rollover crash in Deerfield
Charlemont looks to curb abandoned properties, improve housing stock

When asked about his fuel for writing, Brill couldn’t deny that political and cultural activism plays a large role, with most of his work going unpublished as he usually writes every day.

“I’ve always written poems. I just wrote them,” Brill said. “I was moved by certain instances of being an activist for anti-war and anti-racism. The other day I found a file of poems, and there’s enough for a whole other book of poetry.”

In “Journeys of Voices & Choices,” Brill’s poems are mostly dialogue-style, adding an organic feel that pulls the reader into different perspectives throughout the book.

“I love writing dialogue,” Brill said in regards to his writing style. “I have to work harder and harder on the descriptions.”

At his talk on Wednesday, Brill will read along with the accompaniment of another writer who will share his own work focusing on civil rights. At the end, Brill plans to open the floor to questions and comments from attendees, with the hope of having enough copies of his personal reading list to hand out to guests.

For aspiring writers, Brill’s biggest advice is simply to read and write often. He suggests writing letters or trying to correspond with your favorite authors, as the chances of a response are higher than you might think.

“If you don’t read, you’re not going to see different possibilities of where your writing could go,” Brill said. “Just keep writing and have some friends who are willing to read it. There are a lot of bad sayings out there like, ‘You have to write every day’ — that’s a load of crap. People say as a writer you need to have a newsletter or website, but as you’re doing that, how many hours are you actually spending writing a week?”