"Ellen de Vries is a poet who explores crossroad areas in our lives, places where reality and beyond-reality meet.
She often evokes an environment where threat is present, in relationships between parent and child, between lovers; but threat gentled by a lyric originality that surprises and involves the reader at a deep level.
Her comprehension of our human longing for possibility and transformation is present everywhere in her poems, poignant and yet imbued with wit.
Her language is sheer and confident. See, for instance, her poem ARABIC where a pomegranate is shown, beautifully, to exemplify the power and richness of language itself."
Penelope Shuttle
"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
"We are in the domain of mushrooms, mice, toads, old doors - what Ellen de Vries in one of her poems calls “the vast mechanics of tiny things”. There we find delicate narratives of wonder, humour and sadness. In the three quatrains of ‘Carp’ for example, the last train, a fish, Christmas, snow, blood and a little drink come together with a light sharp touch of sorrow. The domain is in effect the voice too. Another poem, about going home with strangers, locates it perfectly:
Sunlight falters through the trees.
He leans over me like a doctor,
a good father,
or a well-groomed wolf.
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
"I admired writing where imagination was allowed to flex its muscles.'Sea view' by Ellen de Vries is such a poem."
Jill Dawson, Mslexia APRMAYJUN 2006