Synopsis

Breath by Ellen Phethean

Shortlisted for the London New Poetry Award 2010

These poems explore love and loss and the way life insists we carry on. In 2005 Ellen Phethean lost her close friend Julia Darling to breast cancer. Only two months later her husband, the composer Keith Morris, and their close friend, the musician Joe Scurfield, were killed in a hit-and-run accident. In despair and turmoil, all she could do was write: to make sense of the past and to come to terms with the present.

"Ellen Phethean has long been active on the poetry scene.... Breath is her first full-length collection, though a reader wouldn't think so, going by her mature authority and tough love of language. Much experience is distilled here, particularly the sudden loss of her partner just after [Julia] Darling's death. The handling of these bereavements, the skilful restraint of words which let the anger and pain just shimmer through, is breathtaking.... Phethean uses forms - sonnet, villanelle, free verse - with such an assured touch, they slip past you without a bump. Her imagery and settings are urban and gritty like Newcastle, her adopted 'flinty city', from which she strikes such bright sparks."
Mslexia

"There are, as you would imagine, a lot of memories; they are sharp and beautifully observed. […] The best poems are about moments, which, while specific, have a universal appeal."
Keith Richmond, Tribune

"These poems serve as markers through the process of grieving personal losses, which, because of the nature of loss, become universal. They are also very much a celebration of life."
Sally Baker

Ellen Phethean works as a poet and sound artist, playwright and editor. She runs Diamond Twig Press, which she founded with Julia Darling and teaches Creative Writing at the Centre for Lifelong Learning in Newcastle. Her collection Wall, a teen novel in poems, was written while she was writer-in-residence in Byker, Newcastle.

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