Welcome to the website of Ellen Phethean, poet, playwright and editor and co-founder of Diamond Twig press. Ellen's first full collection of poetry, Breath was shortlisted for the London New Poetry Award. Smokestack books published Wall, her novel for teenagers written in poems.
Now Ellen has published another novel, Hom, in installments on this website. She says "It's unusual in that it is written in poems but it uses dialogue, monologue and dialect and is meant to read like mini installments of a novel," and she has been posting new episodes twice a week. Read more about Hom here, or use the monthly archives to start at the beginning (read from the bottom up!
More information about Ellen Phethean.
Each month Ellen selects a poem that she finds wonderful, interesting, challenging, and fresh: we dance May in with Last Waltz by Catherine Graham. It is taken from Catherine's first full collection, Things I Will Put In My Mother's Pocket, published by Indigo Dreams, which will be launched at a free event at the Lit & Phil, Westgate Road, Newcastle-upon-Tyne on Thursday 30th May at 7.00 pm - so if you enjoy it, come to the launch for more of Catherine's poetry.
Diamond Twig Press
Diamond Twig is a small press, launched in 1992 by Ellen Phethean and the late Julia Darling to publish vibrant new writing by women in the North East of England. Publications include and twenty titles in the Branch Lines series: pocket sized books in stylish black-and-white livery, launching new women writers into print.
In October 2011 the twentieth title was added to the Branchlines collection, Inviolate by Sara Park, edited by Kathleen Kenny from Sara's extensive writings, and published posthumously in her memory. At the same time, Red Squirrel Press published Sara's short story collection, Edith Popkiss Laughed Out loud.
Read more about Inviolate by Sara Park, including information on how to order a copy; or read Liver Sense, a poem from Inviolate which was October's Poem of the Month.
Diamond Twig's previous publication, The Ropes, an anthology of new poetry for young people, was shortlisted for the CLPE Poetry Award. Read Ellen's account of the awards ceremony in her online diary.
Read more about The Ropes: Poems to hold on to, including how to order a copy.
Breath
Ellen's poetry collection, Breath, is published by Flambard Press. This work is largely the result of her part-time creative writing MA at Newcastle University, which helped her through the last few years, after the death of her husband Keith Morris, and Julia, within two months of each other in 2005. To quote the book cover: "These poems explore love, loss and the life that insists we carry on", but Ellen says they also contain candid observation and humour.
Breath was shortlisted for the London New Poetry Award, 2009.
"The core of the book is an extraordinarily brave and painful sequence recording the journey through grief which Phethean travelled after her partner, the composer Keith Morris, was killed by a hit-and-run driver in 2005... great poems by any standard..."
Andy Croft, Morning Star
"The handling of these bereavements, the skillful restraint of words which let the anger and pain just shimmer through, is breathtaking."
Valerie Laws, Mslexia, April 2010
Order Breath from Flambard Press.
Use the diamonds to find your way around this site: and if you can't find what you are looking for, check the Site Map, which includes a full list of our authors, and our publications, which we hope you'll buy.
Diamond Twig regrets that we are unable to accept new submissions, until further notice.
