poet ● novelist ● arts collaborator ● teacher
Click into the T.S.Eliot Prize site Shortlisted poets in focus to watch Philip interviewed and reading three sample poems from his shortlisted collection The Thirteenth Angel. You'll find Readers' Notes and a thoughtful commissioned review by John Field, as well as a way into the other shortlisted collections.
In a live-streamed launch reading on Tues 22 November 2022, Bloodaxe Books celebrated the publication of two new poetry collections: Philip Gross' The Thirteenth Angel, and Ales Steger's Burning Tongues.
Philip and Ales read, then with the help of well-placed questions from host, Bloodaxe editor Neil Astley, moved into a discussion of the books, the times we're in and the place of poetry. This free Bloodaxe launch event was streamed on YouTube Live and remains there free to watch and listen on this YouTube page https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K80MQ6kyTYg
Publication Date : 17 Nov 2022 Paperback £12.00 ISBN 9781780376356
With each new collection, Philip Gross’ poems extend their conversation between the metaphysical and the acutely physical. His sequences in The Thirteenth Angel scan from moment to moment like flickering needles, registering stress patterns in the world around us – ebbs and flows of weather or events, in our own bodies, in the city streets before and after the pandemic, or on the autoroutes of Europe with their undertow of human flight. If there are angels, they are nothing otherworldly, but formed by angles of incidence between real immediate things, sudden moments of clarity that may disturb, calm or exhilarate.
The Thirteenth Angel is Philip Gross’s 27th book of poetry, and his 12th from Bloodaxe.
https://www.philipgross.co.uk/wordpress/?p=677&preview=true
My contributions, The Lucifer Event, The Shores of Purgatory and The Shadows of Paradise are on pp.47-50
Just a glimpse of Valerie Coffin Price's elegant and eloquent 'setting' of my poem adding a point of personal memory and value to a map of the Brecon Beacons, as part of the ambitious wide-ranging Outposted project, "bringing together a wide range of professional and emerging writers, artists, performers and makers, from various locations across the UK, to work in our collective solitude and create art that aims to be compelling, relevant and high quality in content and execution".
This and much other work went on display this Three Storeys exhibition in March of this year.
To turn, to dig, to plough, to upset, to translate… Bend, lap, journey, time... The Welsh word troeon unfolds meaning after meaning.
In TROEON : TURNINGS, two poets confident in their own traditions meet in the hinterland between translation and collaboration - Cyril Jones from the disciplines of Welsh cynghanedd, Philip Gross from the restless variety of English verse.
In the same spirit, Valerie Coffin Price plays an equal part with striking letterpress designs that surprise the language of both writers into new awareness of its possibilities.
https://www.serenbooks.com/productdisplay/troeon-turnings
Published: 2021 £12.99
My thanks to the quiet thoughtful online space of One Hand Clapping journal for a chance to share this encounter with the history of Estonia, and of part of my family – from a collection-to-be of poems and prose poems dealing with the spirit of Estonia and, in particular, of vaikus, one of several Estonian words for silence.
Voices of the Earth has been an annual art and poetry course, encouraging serious creative play and cross-fertilisation of art forms underpinned by an awareness of the complexity of life on Earth.
Like other centres and facilities, the Woodbrooke Quaker study centre in Birmingham couldn't be open for onsite events during pandemic restrictions. But we kept the culture of the course alive by taking it online.
In two years on experiment with an interactive course spread flexibly over six weeks, using Zoom and Moodle, with forums and “creative exchange rooms”. we've learned a lot about online ways of working.
Tutors: Philip Gross is a poet, prose writer, and until 2017, Professor of Creative Writing at the University of South Wales. Zélie Gross is a Quaker writer and editor, with a background in making and teaching of visual arts. For both, collaboration is a source of fresh work and delight.
It’s hard to know how poetry can play a part in times of anger and loud discord, when anything less than shouting seems too quiet to be heard. In readings from our collaboration, A Part of the Main. Lesley Saunders and I have tried to offer deep perspective for questions about individual and national identity, themes of migration, loss of love or home or language, and a kind of listening that goes beyond the either/or. Our thanks to our publisher, Mulfran Press, and to kind hosts and thoughtful audiences in Cardiff, London, Oxford, Reading, Shrewsbury, Tunbridge Wells, Bath, Bradford on Avon and others to come.
Ellen Bell writes in Poetry Wales: With its plea for unity… for emotional ad linguistic empathy… for the recognition of a ‘motherline’ that speaks of us all originating from the same source, A Part of the Main, resolutely alive with flint-sparking metaphor, and not least by its claim ‘that our birthright was not to be great but be kind’, is a clarion voice in a din of obfuscation.
A Part of the Main, by Philip Gross and Lesley Saunders,For readings, mail us through the Contact page on this site: https://www.philipgross.co.uk/contact.php
Jason Goodwin, festival organiser, writes: "Run by Estonian writers, publishers and translators, this festival is a feast, a conversation and a joy..." Philip Gross appeared in three events including Spores and Sparks, reading with Doris Kareva, at the Estonian National Library, Tallinn - followed by discussion with other British writers, Jason Goodwin, Michel Faber, Louisa Young, Nikky Smedley... and a Poetry Mass in Niguliste church museum
https://headread.ee/en/ 