'De Vries’s is an essentially European voice, learned with fairy tale and the scatterings of history on everyday life, crystallizing that life without fuss, the poems like jewels that sit comfortably in the hand and hurt just a little.'
George Szirtes
'Ellen de Vries works with the quiet precision of a naturalist dissecting a world of ordinary beauty. Side-stepping the shadows of larger stories, her poems explore both the humanity of myth, and the smallness of being human. A touching, intriguing debut.'
Ros Barber
Ellen de Vries is a Brighton-based writer who enjoys collaborating with other artists and the cross-pollination between art forms. She was born in Belfast to a Northern Irish mother and a Dutch father. She has lived in many countries including Morocco, Yemen, the Czech Republic and Romania. She now lives and works as a full time writer in Brighton.
Ellen was shortlisted for the Eric Gregory Award 2006 in Great Britain. Most of the poems she sent in to that were based on the manuscript for 'Girl in the air'. She has also had publications accepted in British national journals and magazines such as Magma, Mslexia, Frogmore papers, Aesthetica and Iota.
In 2003 she won a Netherlands national ‘Write Now’ award for a poem called ‘Mijn Buurt.’ At that time she also taught creative writing at the American Bookshop in the Hague. Since returning to England, she has read on BBC radio, set up Mouth Cabaret during the Brighton Fringe Festival, worked at the Rotterdam International Poetry Festival and spent lots of time working with The South Literature Network.
