The Water Table

A powerful and ambiguous body of water lies at the heart of these poems, with shoals and channels that change with the forty-foot tide. Even the name is fluid—from one shore, the Bristol Channel, from the other Mor Hafren, the Severn Sea.

Philip Gross's meditations move with subtle steps between these shifting grounds and those of the man-made world, the ageing body and that ever-present mystery, the self. Admirers of his work know each new collection is a new stage; this one marks a crossing into a new questioning, new clarity and depth.

Philip Gross is Professor of Creative Writing at Glamorgan University. He has published six books with Bloodaxe, including 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. He is also the author of ten highly-praised novels for young people. Born in Cornwall, he lived in Bristol and Bath for many years, and now lives in Penarth in South Wales.