Dark Sky Park: Poems from the Edge of Nature was on the shortlist for the prestigious CLiPPA award for children’s poetry. Go to the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education's POETRYLINE https://clpe.org.uk/poetryline/clippa for videos of poems by all five shortlisted poets - Kwame Alexander, Stephen Camden, Eloise Greenfield, Rachel Rooney and myself.
Congratulations to Stephen Camden, announced as winner of CLiPPA 2019 at a ceremony at the National Theatre in Wednesday 3rd July, in front of 900 children from across the UK who took part in the CLiPPA shadowing scheme in their schools in the run up to the award.
Each book was represented by a performance from one of the schools, as well as the writer in person or (in the case of the US poets) on video. My poem Aleppo Cat was performed – no, better than that, embodied – by Imogen and Poppy from Whitehill Junior School, Hitchin, who really got inside the words and became them. What more could any poet ask? My thanks to them, and all the staff and classmates who supported them.
NEW: A brand new collection of poems for children and adults alike, with one foot in real science, one in wild imagination – my words doing a dance with Jesse Hodgson's deft and vivid illustrations
- published by Otter-Barry Books, 2018: https://www.otterbarrybooks.com/dark-sky-park
And here's Jill Bennett's wholehearted adventurous plunge into all its heights and depths https://redreadinghub.blog/2018/09/28/dark-sky-park/
... and Alison Kelly's generous thoughtful review from the Schoolzone section of readingzone.com: https://readingzone.com/index.php?zone=sz&page=book&isbn=9781910959886&utm_source=phplist11&utm_medium=email&utm_content=HTML&utm_campaign=Free+review+copies%2C+author+Q%26A%27s+and+Latest+Reviews
... and Kate Wakeling, in the Winter 2018 issue of Carousel. "The poems in this dazzling new collection from Philip Gross are rare, distinct and mesmerising as the the creatures and landscapes he explores here. By turns witty and elegiac, his poems gaze in fierce wonder at the worlds of snow leopards, tardigrades and glacial worms, while also starkly challenging humankind’s cruelty and greed. … This is an imaginative, urgent and beautifully crafted collection."
NEW....
Introducing Shadowplay, a collaboration with Australian poet and artist Jenny Pollak, published in the handsome (and subtly varied) livery of Flarestack Poets.
Mark Tredinnick writes: 'Philip Gross is one of our poetic elders, and so he writes here - his stanzas taut and gentle, inventive and provocative koans, Jenny Pollak, a brilliant sculptor, is a lyric and plainspoken contemplative...'
And Jeremy Hooker: 'The exploratory work they create... makes a hospitable 'place' into which the reader enters, not as an eavesdropper, but almost as a third collaborator, sharing the surprise and delight of the conversation.'
£6 from Flarestack - contact flarestackpoets@gmail.com
For more about collaboration, go to https://www.philipgross.co.uk/collaborations.php and https://www.philipgross.co.uk/writing-about-writing.php
A year or more on, this still feels worth saying – written for mainly American readers, via the rather good Superstition [Review]
http://blog.superstitionreview.asu.edu/2017/04/08/guest-post-philip-gross-beyond-yes-or-no/
TRANSLATING SILENCE – BY PHILIP GROSS
In ‘silencesilencesilencesilencesilence' – a digital pamphlet on Estonian poetry, produced with support from @LitBritish. http://modernpoetryintranslation.com/silencesilencesilencesilencesilencesilence-a-digital-pamphlet-on-estonian-poetry/
Read online for free, including a short essay on the different languages of silence, with poems by great Estonian writers Juhan Viiding, Jaan Kaplinski and Doris Kareva and one of my own - http://modernpoetryintranslation.com/translating-silence-by-philip-gross/ ... with a very warm memory of conversations with Doris, Kätlin Kaldmaa and many others at EstLitFest, the Estonian Literature Festival, in London this Spring.
A handsome and gift-able multi-angled tribute to the shape-shifting of rivers, poems by Eavan Boland, Kayo Chingonyi, Ian Duhig, Philip Gross, Kathleen Jamie, Zaffar Kunial, Beth McDonough, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Pascale Petit and Julian Turner - edited by Ian Duhig, published by the Candlestick Press. Cover illustration by Ian Phillips. £4.95... which sends a donation to The Rivers Trust.
http://www.candlestickpress.co.uk/pamphlet/ten-poems-about-rivers/
Poetry School seminars are intimate workshops led by some of our best working poets. These groups have helped many writers around the UK become part of their local poetry communities and to develop their work through long-term guidance. In these seminars, a small group of participants meet on a monthly basis to workshop poems-in-progress, discuss contemporary poetry and develop new skills and confidence in their writing, all under the direction and guidance of a published tutor.
This group will meet at The Courtyard in Hereford on (generally) the first Tuesday of the month, from October 2018 to May 2019. This will be a small and supportive group, with a maximum of 8 students, and will be led by the award-winning poet Philip Gross. Places for the year cost £240 full price, with concessions available for those over 60 or in receipt of state benefits.
This seminar is full and well under way, but it will run again from October 2018. Keep in touch with the Poetry School for details.
Breaking taboos for its own sake is adolescent, especially other people’s taboos. But there’s a grown up question in the game of Perverse, a magazine responding to a call from editor Chrissy Williams for “deliberate, obstinate, unreasonable or unacceptable poems” The question is: ‘What’s the particular decorum you would feel queasiest offending? What energies, for good or ill, would it release if I did?’ Then you can choose.
Issue 3 is just out, including a small perversity of mine. Available by email subscription or by twitterfeed - https://twitter.com/perversemag
