The Egg of Zero

The zero at the heart of these poems is not nothing - not simply absence, forgetting or loss, though there are moving elegies among them. This is a not-quite-definable zero that gives surprising edge to life and language round it. Direct, meditative, playful, hyper-alert, Philip Gross's distinctively wide range of tones work together in a subtle, searching new collection that addresses both the mind and heart. These poems explore the spaces that can open between buildings in a city street, in the shifting lights of love and ageing, or in the gaps between words. Heady and sobering, unsettling, celebratory, they come home with findings from the real world of the senses, heart and mind.

About the Author :
Born in Cornwall, son of an Estonian wartime refugee,Philip Grosshas lived in Plymouth, Bristol and South Wales, where he was Professor of Creative Writing at Glamorgan University (USW). His 27th collection,The Thirteenth Angel(2022), is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and is shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize 2022. It follows eleven previous books with Bloodaxe, includingBetween the Islands(2020),A Bright Acoustic(2017),Love Songs of Carbon(2015), winner of the Roland Mathias Poetry Award and a Poetry Book Society Recommendation;Deep Field(2011), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation;The Water Table(2009), winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize 2009; andChanges of Address: Poems 1980-1998(2001), his selection from earlier books includingThe Ice Factory, Cat's Whisker, The Son of the Duke of Nowhere, I.D.andThe Wasting Game. SinceThe Air Mines of Mistila(with Sylvia Kantaris, Bloodaxe Books, 1988), he has been a keen collaborator, most recently with artist Valerie Coffin Price onA Fold in the River(2015), with poet Lesley Saunders onA Part of the Main(2018), and with Welsh-languagebarddCyril Jones onTroeon/Turnings(2021).I Spy Pinhole Eye(Cinnamon Press, 2009), with photographer Simon Denison, won the Wales Book of the Year Award 2010. He received a Cholmondeley Award in 2017. Philip Gross's poetry for young people includesManifold Manor, The All-Nite Cafe(winner of the Signal Award 1994),Off Road to Everywhere(winner of the CLPE Award 2011) and the poetry-science collectionDark Sky Park(shortlisted for the CLiPPA award 2019).

Review :
'Nature, people, the obscurities of one's self, yield up their otherness in those epiphanic moments when Gross' peripheral eyesight catches them off guard. His is a voice that is mordant, obsessive, compelling - but nonetheless grateful for the rewards of living' - "PBS Bulletin". 'Philip Gross knows how to make silence and suggestion resonate...he touches an alien, intractable dimension...Gross's poems are about lost bearings and blurred frontiers' - Terry Eagleton, "Independent on Sunday". 'He should be recognised as one of England's very best poets, not only for the exuberance of his imagination, but because of what he is writing about' - John Greening, "Times Literary Supplement". 'Many of the poems convey a deep awareness of this fragility and downright improbability that forms the core of our lives...[enabling] us better to treasure our "ordinary" moments - the taken-for granted, charted ground' - Kate Keogan, "Acumen".