Events

The play of opposites at Charney Manor, June 2026

Very pleased to be part of a developing programme in the Quaker-flavoured and creative calm space of Charney Manor, in the heart of rural Oxfordshire.

My father’s stamp collection, home at last

For sixty years in exile, my father Juhan (John) Karl Gross collected the stamps of the first period of Estonin independence, coming out of the 1914-18 War, then submerged in that of 1949-45. He collected every trace, down to thepoostmarks of individual villages and mail trains, and annotated the pages in his minute handwriting. What to do with a thing of that value – I don't mean market value – after his death?

Fourteen years on, this was the answer. With the friendly, dedicated help of the Estonian Embassy in London, the albums made their way to the gentle and exact curating hands of the Eesti Rahva Muuseum in Tartu. Home at last. My thanks to everyone involved. And the poem that accompanied them can be read HERE.

Conversations with Silence, 6 November, 2025

Thursday 6th November, 5.30-7pm
Quaker Centre, Euston Road, London
Across 40 years of writing life, Philip Gross’ poems have been listening to many kinds of silence – never more so than in his latest book, The Shores of Vaikus, which inhabits the resonant forests and islands of Estonia.
Hear Philip read and talk about this ongoing exploration, looking back and looking forward, in conversation with Joe Jones, editor of The Friend, with space for your own questions and discussion at the end.

Free admission

A Clearing in Cardiff, 12 November, 2025

Space to listen to poetry, music, and silence. 

An evening of stillness, sound, and shared presence.  Poetry: Philip Gross, Taz Rahman, Luca Paci.  Music: Uli Doenitz, Chris Glynn, Rebecca Warner.

Together we create a clearing — a space where words and music meet, and silence becomes part of the listening. Come to pause, reflect, and experience art in its quietest form.

Wednesday, 12 November, 7-45-9.45pm Doors open 7pm.
Cornerstone, Charles Street, Cardiff CF10 2GA Admission £8

A Hadron Press event www.selfhelpisland.com/hadron-press

Eventbrite link here  

Hearing the words and the silences: Exeter, March 7th, 2025

There”s always a deeper, more spacious feeling to a reading in a Quaker meeting house – something about a culture attuned to listening to silences as alertly as to the surrounding words.

Under the Red Guitar, El Rincon, Bristol. 19th Feb. 2025

My first visit to this thriving Bristol venue conjured out of words and music in the tapas-scented air by Bob Walton and friends...

The Shores of Vaikus, at the Estonian Embassy, London

For a taste of Estonian land-and-sea-scapes, and an Estonian sense of an inwardness, quiet and alert, as redress for the damage of a fractious world...

Embassy of Estonia, 44 Queen's Gate Terrace London SW7 5PJ        

Thu, 23 Jan 2025 18:00 - 20:00 GMT            Click here for an invitation.  

Philip Gross reading and in conversation with Estonian writer Kai Aareleid.

 

 

 

 

 

Marie Howe, Philip Gross, David Constantine: Bloodaxe online launch event

Look out for the play of contrasts and quite unplanned correspondences in the weaving of three so-different voices, in poems and in conversation, still available to watch and hear on: https://youtube.com/live/lEW5RAH5R-g

The Shores of Vaikus (and The Thirteenth Angel)

Nearly two years now since the publication of The Thirteenth Angel, which received some fine thoughtful reviews after its moment in the sunlight of the TS Eliot shortlist… and The Shores of Vaikus appears from Bloodaxe on November 21st.

This book feels like a keeping of faith with Estonia – vaikus is one of several Estonian words for silence, in a positive sense – not this time through the lens of my father’s early life and exile but from my own visits there since independence more than 30 years ago. The voice that speaks in the prose poems of Evi and the Devil, in the centre of the book, still surprises me. It surely isn’t mine. I just have to trust that I’ve been hearing something that’s real, of Estonia’s own.

"If I sit still enough, the birds hop closer. Insects blunder onto me en route to flowers on the other side. Finally, the dead unpeel the papery crust of non-existence, and step out blinking in the sun."

"It’s been no time at all, geologically speaking, since this was a sea bed. That’s still where I go to sleep some nights. Down in the kelp forest. I should stay there really – better for everyone – but my nerve fails, so I stomp my feet in the silt, till it swirls, and what the world calls history begins to rise."

THE SHORES OF VAIKUS. Publication Date : 21 Nov 2024.  Paperback.   £12.00.     9781780377179

 

'The Thirteenth Angel, like all Philip Gross’s work, fuses the physical and the metaphysical, and lights the profoundest subject matter with shafts of playful humour. He is a poet with exceptional gifts of observation, whether it’s a panoramic view of the earth and its inhabitants or ‘the mutterings of quiet circumstance / under the threshold of attention’.' – Jean Sprackland, Chair of Judges, T.S. Eliot Prize 2022

THE THIRTEENTH ANGEL.  Publication Date : 17 Nov 2022.  Paperback.    £12.00.    9781780376356

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