Later

Reviews / Votes

'A powerful and tender successor to the T.S. Eliot prize-winning The Water Table - The writing is sinewy, urgent and resourceful. This poet is a master of form, deploying his visual and aural patterns for emphasis, as if the page were a musical score - The collection evokes an essence of what it is to be human, the sense of both wonder and estrangement, our place within science, the sheer oddness of who we are. Deep Field is as strong in celebration as in lamentation. With language as its theme, it soars linguistically' - Michael Symmons Roberts & Moniza Alvi, PBS Bulletin, on Deep Field. 'This book speaks directly to the heart of Lapidus concerns with how language can convey, transcend and re-enchant human experience. Philip Gross has not only honoured his father but created something of great beauty and wonder out from those final wordless years' - Victoria Field, Lapidus Journal. 'Philip Gross's previous collection, the T.S. Eliot Prize winning The Water Table, suggested a deepening vision based on focused contemplation of the world and our place - or lack of place - within it. This new collection takes us deeper still, sustaining with extra ordinary virtuosity a series of meditative variations on the related themes of language and wordlessness, human existence and the loss of identity' - Jem Poster, Planet. '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. 'Some of the poems are marvellous, not because they are brave about their subject, not even because of the technique on display, but because they are electrifyingly well observed and beautifully written' - David Morley, Poetry Review.