{"product_id":"the-shores-of-vaikus-9781780377179","title":"The Shores of Vaikus","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eIn this edgy homage to Estonia, the country of his refugee father's birth, T S Eliot Prizewinner Philip Gross continues to develop the subtle conversation between words and silence that is at the core of his poetry.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAt this collection's heart, the shapeshifting prose-poem monologues of this book's central sequence, \u003cem\u003eEvi And The Devil, \u003c\/em\u003eweave a haunted landscape out of folktale, dark humour, the routine atrocities of history and a vividly present sense of place. The island of Vaikus (one of several words for silence in Estonian) is Estonia condensed, refracted in the dark waters of a bog pool. The voice that speaks with such compelling otherness is a channelling of a culture and a disposition often drowned out in successive occupations by the empires of the day, but always alive, and whispering. The resulting book is both a bold departure and a drawing together of the whole range of a writing life.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e'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 E\u003ci\u003evi and The Devil\u003c\/i\u003e. [...] 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.'\u003c\/b\u003e - Dana Littlepage Smith, \u003ci\u003eThe Friend\u003c\/i\u003e, on \u003ci\u003eThe Shores of Vaikus\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e'Paradoxically, \u003ci\u003eThe Shores of Vaikus\u003c\/i\u003e 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.'\u003c\/b\u003e - Stuart Henson, \u003ci\u003eLondon Grip\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e'\u003ci\u003eThe Shores of Vaikus\u003c\/i\u003e 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.' \u003c\/b\u003e- Tom Phillips, \u003ci\u003eThe High Window\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBorn in Cornwall, son of an Estonian wartime refugee, \u003cb\u003ePhilip Gross\u003c\/b\u003e has lived in Plymouth, Bristol and South Wales, where he was Professor of Creative Writing at Glamorgan University (USW). His 28th book of poetry, \u003ci\u003eThe Shores of Vaikus\u003c\/i\u003e, is published by Bloodaxe in 2025. His previous collection, \u003ci\u003e The Thirteenth Angel \u003c\/i\u003e(2023), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize 2022. That followed eleven previous books with Bloodaxe, including\u003ci\u003e Between the Islands\u003c\/i\u003e (2020), \u003ci\u003eA Bright Acoustic\u003c\/i\u003e (2017), \u003ci\u003eLove Songs of Carbon\u003c\/i\u003e (2015), winner of the Roland Mathias Poetry Award and a Poetry Book Society Recommendation;\u003ci\u003e Deep Field\u003c\/i\u003e (2011), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation;\u003ci\u003e The Water Table\u003c\/i\u003e (2009), winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize 2009; and \u003ci\u003eChanges of Address: Poems 1980-1998\u003c\/i\u003e (2001), his selection from earlier books including\u003ci\u003e The Ice Factory\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eCat's Whisker\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Son of the Duke of Nowhere\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003e I.D.\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Wasting Game\u003c\/i\u003e. His collaboration with photographer Simon Denison, \u003ci\u003eI Spy Pinhole Eye\u003c\/i\u003e (Cinnamon Press, 2009), won the Wales Book of the Year Award 2010.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Bloodaxe Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51181024903442,"sku":"9781780377179","price":12.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_facee56a-845b-4236-8ceb-20f90ab0bb87.jpg?v=1744388788","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/the-shores-of-vaikus-9781780377179","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}