Philip Gross's The Shores of Vaikus reviewed in The Friend
Philip Gross's 28th book of poetry The Shores of Vaikus is published by Bloodaxe Books in November 2024. It follows The Thirteenth Angel (2022), which was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize 2022. He is a previous winner of this award, having won the TS Eliot Prize 2009 for his collection The Water Table.
The Shores of Vaikus features poems of homage to Estonia, the country of Philip Gross's refugee father’s birth. The long central prose-poem monologues of Evi And The Devil weave a haunted landscape out of folktale, dark humour, the routine atrocities of history and a vividly present sense of place.
REVIEW COVERAGE
The Friend, Friday 13 September 2024
A very early but excellent in-depth review of Philip Gross’s forthcoming collection The Shores of Vaikus was featured in the Quaker magazine The Friend of 13 September 2024
‘Philip Gross’s latest collection, his twenty-eighth book, begins and ends with meditations on, among other things, silence. Between these two sections, entitled ‘Translating Silence’, we meet the prose-poetry of Evi and The Devil. […] Alongside his extraordinary yet historically based imaginative quest, he gives us glimpses which allow the reader to centre. For sharing a lifetime of seeing and feeling, and for honing and polishing the lens of his vision/craft, we can be deeply grateful.’ – Dana Littlepage Smith, The Friend, on The Shores of Vaikus
Featured in print over two pages. Also available online without subscription.
https://thefriend.org/article/the-shores-of-vaikus
ONLINE LAUNCH EVENT
Online launch reading by Marie Howe, Philip Gross and David Constantine, Friday 8 November 2024, 7pm GMT
Marie Howe, Philip Gross and David Constantine will be celebrating the publication of their new titles, all published by Bloodaxe in November 2024. All three poets will be reading live and discussing their work with each other and with the host, Bloodaxe editor Neil Astley. Watch live or later via YouTube.
[04 November 2024]
