Love Songs of Carbon

Born in Cornwall, son of an Estonian wartime refugee, Philip Gross has lived in Plymouth, Bristol and South Wales, where he was Professor of Creative Writing at Glamorgan University (USW). His 26th collection, Between the Islands (2020), follows ten previous books with Bloodaxe, including 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; and Changes of Address: Poems 1980-1998 (2001), his selection from earlier books including The Ice Factory, Cat’s Whisker, The Son of the Duke of Nowhere, I.D. and The Wasting Game. Since The Air Mines of Mistila (with Sylvia Kantaris, Bloodaxe Books, 2020), he has been a keen collaborator, most recently with artist Valerie Coffin Price on A Fold in the River (2015) and with poet Lesley Saunders on A Part of the Main (2018). 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 includes Manifold Manor, The All-Nite Café (winner of the Signal Award 1994), Off Road to Everywhere (winner of the CLPE Award 2011) and the poetry-science collection Dark Sky Park.

'Gross does appear to have come into his own, with fresh wind in his sails... Now in his sixties... he is working at quite a throttle and with a full-throated clarity that sounds, suddenly, like no one else around' - Conor O'Callaghan, Poetry London.; 'Later is a magnificent extended elegy, formally adventurous, poised between narrative and metaphysics, themes and variation' - Carol Rumens, Poetry Review.; 'This is a collection which consistently grips, involves and challenges; it confirms Philip Gross as one of our most consistently interesting and skilful poets' - Tony Brown, New Welsh Review.; '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 absolute poise of the lines carve a way through the knotted difficulty of the raw material' - Michael Symmons Roberts & Moniza Alvi, PBS Bulletin, on Deep Field.

• 9 Paul Klee: the late style 12 This body, 14 Thirty Feet Under 15 Mould Music 19 Coming Of Age I 20 A Briefer History of Time 23 A Love Song of Carbon 24 I Remember I Remember 26 Heartland 28 Hold 29 Limited Edition 30 I Am Those Clothes 31 Hit Man 32 In the Small Town 33 The Rag Well, Madron 35 Coming Of Age II 36 Hordes 37 Towards A General Theory of String 39 Fission 41 Heaps 43 A Pump in Africa 44 Pinches 46 Theses Written on Mud 49 Epstein's Adam 50 The Players 52 Ways To Play 53 Coprolite 54 Fire Balloon Heart 55 The Shapes They Make 56 Mattins 58 Waits 60 Coming Of Age III 62 The Way It Arrives, 63 Watermark 65 Small Songs of Carbon 67 A Walk Across A Field 69 Several Shades of Ellipsis 73 Brownian Motion 74 Whereas 75 Thirteen Ways To Fold The Darkness