Egg Of Zero, The

Description: The zero at the heart of these poems is not nothing - not simply absence, forgetting or loss, though there are moving elegies among them. This is a not-quite-definable zero that gives surprising edge to life and language round it. Direct, meditative, playful, hyper-alert, Philip Gross's distinctively wide range of tones work together in a subtle, searching new collection that addresses both the mind and heart. 'Nature, people, the obscurities of one's self, yield up their otherness in those epiphanic moments when Gross' peripheral eyesight catches them off guard. His is a voice that is mordant, obsessive, compelling - but nonetheless grateful for the rewards of living' - 'PBS Bulletin'. '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'. 'He should be recognised as one of England's very best poets, not only for the exuberance of his imagination, but because of what he is writing about' - John Greening, 'Times Literary Supplement'. 'Many of the poems convey a deep awareness of this fragility and downright improbability that forms the core of our lives...[enabling] us better to treasure our 'ordinary' moments - the taken-for granted, charted ground' - Kate Keogan, 'Acumen'. Author Biography: Philip Gross is Professor of Creative Writing at Glamorgan University. His tenth collection, A Bright Acoustic (due June 2017), follows nine prevous books with Bloodaxe, including Love Songs of Carbon (2015), winner of the Roland Mathias Poetry Award (Wales Book of the Year), also a Poetry Book Society Recommendation; Later (2013); Deep Field (2011), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, which was shortlisted for the Roland Mathias Poetry Award (Wales Book of the Year); The Water Table (2009), winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize; The Egg of Zero (2006); Mappa Mundi (2003), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation; 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. His book I Spy Pinhole Eye (Cinnamon Press, 2009), a collaborative work with photographer Simon Denison, won the Wales Book of the Year Award 2010. He is also the author of ten highly-praised novels for young people. His poetry for children includes Manifold Manor, The All-Nite Cafe (winner of the Signal Award 1994), Scratch City and Off Road To Everywhere (winner of the CLPE Award 2011). Since The Song of Gail and Fludd (1991) he has published nine more novels for young people, most recently The Storm Garden (2006). Born in Cornwall, he lived in Bristol and Bath for many years, and now lives in Penarth in South Wale