Philip Gross's The Shores of Vaikus reviewed in The Friend
Philip Gross's 28th book of poetry The Shores of Vaikus was 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.
ONLINE REVIEW COVERAGE
London Grip, online 27 February 2025
A brilliant review of Philip Gross’ new collection The Shores of Vaikus went online in London Grip on 27 February 2025. Reviewer Stuart Henson is particularly impressed with the prose-poem monologues of Evi And The Devil, writing: ‘the central sequence, Evi and the Devil, strikes me as an outstanding achievement: original, subtle, and free of judgement.’
‘Paradoxically, The Shores of Vaikus is both a timely and a timeless work. The past is curiously, hauntingly, alive along the shorelines and within the forests of present-day Estonia, the locus of Philip Gross’s latest book. So much is liminal, evanescent […] and the shadow-stories that impel these poems seem all the more chilling at a point in history when old patterns of empire-building are threatening to repeat themselves. […] His tone is modest but his intelligence is fierce. In this his 28th book he’s still seeking to do what the real poets do—to translate the world, and the significance that rests in its silences.’ – Stuart Henson, London Grip
https://londongrip.co.uk/2025/02/london-grip-poetry-review-philip-gross-2/
REGIONAL RADIO READING BY PHILIP GROSS
The Poetry Place with Philip Gross, Episode #61, West Wilts Radio, Sunday 26 January 2025, 3pm
Philip Gross was guest poet on West Wilts Radio’s The Poetry Place on 26 January. He was reading poems from his new collection The Shores of Vaikus, his 28th book of poetry.
Philip read and introduced his poems ‘The Old Country’ and ‘The Crossing’. He read from the central sequence of prose poem monologues ‘Evi And The Devil’. Philip described Evi as a character who had escaped from a novel he never wrote, and thinks of her voice as being the voice of the place – Estonia. He concluded by reading ‘Learning to speak’, the penultimate poem in The Shores of Vaikus.
Philip is introduced by co-host Dawn Gorman at the top of the show. Philip features from 26:09.
https://westwiltsradio.com/shows/the-poetry-place-with-philip-gross-61_26-1-25/
ONLINE REVIEW COVERAGE
The High Window, online 2 January 2025
Excellent reviews of Philip Gross’s new collection The Shores of Vaikus, Nia Broomhall’s prize-winning debut poetry pamphlet Backalong, and David Constantine’s new translation A Bird Called Elaeus: poems for here and now from The Greek Anthology all feature in the January 2025 issue of The High Window.
'The Shores of Vaikus is a rich and rewarding collection, thanks largely to the adept deployment of language in ways that provide a welcome aesthetic jolt, but it is also a profound reflection on belonging – not just only to our primary landscape, but to the earth as a whole. [...] It’s a pleasure to read a volume of poetry that is so alert to the multifarious contingencies of history.' – Tom Phillips, The High Window
https://thehighwindowpress.com/2025/01/02/the-high-window-reviews-2-january-2025/#Philip%20Gross
REVIEW COVERAGE
Buzz, December 2024
A brilliant review of Philip Gross’s new collection The Shores of Vaikus, his 28th book of poetry, featured in Mab Jones’s December poetry round-up in the Welsh magazine Buzz.
‘… an extraordinary book, all told. “If the best / of silence could translate to taste / it tastes like this”; and, if the best of poetry could translate to a book, then here it is. Put it on your wish list and get it for your friends today. Just luminous.' – Mab Jones, Buzz magazine
In print. Also available online here.
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
Marie Howe, Philip Gross and David Constantine celebrated the publication of their new titles, all published by Bloodaxe in November 2024. All three poets read live and discussed their work with each other and with the host, Bloodaxe editor Neil Astley. Available now via YouTube.
[04 November 2024]
