Thirteenth Angel

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). Shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize his 27th collection, The Thirteenth Angel (2022), follows eleven previous books with Bloodaxe, including Between 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; 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.

Moving from island to island, continent to continent, Between the Islands is concerned with memories, with resonances throughout time, but also with emergent dangers; ecological fears and the rising islands of refuse accumulating in our oceans.

• 11 Nocturne: The Information22 Porcelain24 The Follies25 Smatter38 A Q’ran of Ruzbihan39 Black Glass Sonata42 Scenes from the Lives of Stone Angels44 Disintegration Loops46 Moon, O47 Sky Space49 The Mishnah of the Moment51 Psalm: You52 Paul Klee: the Later Angels55 Ash Plaint in the Key of O57 Transient58 A Near Distance59 The Named Storm60 Developing the Negatives63 A Shadow on the House65 Crack and Warp69 If Today…70 Springtime in Pandemia77 Descants on Dante81 Thirteen Angels92 Silence Like Rain