Deep Field

By Philip Gross

In his nineties Philip Gross's father, a wartime refugee, began to lose his several languages, first to deafness, then profound aphasia. Deeply thought as well as deeply felt, these poems reach into that gulf to find him -through recovery of histories both spoken and unspoken as well as an excavation of the spoken word itself. Readers who admired Philip Gross's subtlety and range in his T.S. Eliot Prize-winning collection The Water Table will find those qualities brought to a new human urgency in the compelling sequences of Deep Field, which was shortlisted for the Roland Mathias Poetry Award (Wales Book of the Year) in 2012. Poetry Book Society Recommendation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
• Release date: Mar 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781780370552

Philip Gross

Born in Cornwall, son of an Estonian wartime refugee, Philip Gross has lived in Plymouth, Bristol, and latterly South Wales, where he was Professor of Creative Writing at Glamorgan University (USW). His 27th collection, The Thirteenth Angel (2022), is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and is shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize 2022. It 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 2009; 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, 1988), he has been a keen collaborator, most recently with artist Valerie Coffin Price on A Fold in the River (2015), with poet Lesley Saunders on A Part of the Main (2018), and with Welsh-language bardd Cyril Jones on Troeon/Turnings (2021). 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 (shortlisted for the CLiPPA award 2019).

Book preview

PHILIP GROSS

DEEP FIELD

Poetry Book Society Recommendation

In his nineties Philip Gross’s father, a wartime refugee, began to lose his several languages, first to deafness, then profound aphasia. Deeply thought as well as deeply felt, these poems reach into that gulf to find him – through recovery of histories both spoken and unspoken as well as an excavation of the spoken word itself.

Readers who admired Philip Gross’s subtlety and range in his T.S. Eliot Prize-winning collection The Water Table will find those qualities brought to a new human urgency in the compelling sequences of Deep Field, which was shortlisted for the Roland Mathias Poetry Award (Wales Book of the Year) in 2012.

‘A powerful and tender successor to the T.S. Eliot prize-winning The Water Table… 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 collection evokes an essence of what it is to be human, the sense of both wonder and estrangement, our place within science, the sheer oddness of who we are. Deep Field is as strong in celebration as in lamentation. With language as its theme, it soars linguistically’

–

MICHAEL SYMMONS ROBERTS

&

MONIZA ALVI,

PBS Bulletin.

COVER PHOTOGRAPH

Hubble Ultra Deep Field galaxies (2004)

NASA/ESA / STSCI / S. BECKWITH, HUDF TEAM / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Hubble Space Telescope Ultra Deep Field, the deepest view ever taken of the universe

Philip Gross

DEEP FIELD

for John Karl Gross

(1919-2011)

…dans la ruine de Babel. Double valeur sémantique de la ruine: negative, elle indique la destruction; positive, elle signale la préservation.

ALEXIS NOUSS

CONTENTS

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Scry

Something Like The Sea

I

:

John, this is the sea…

No peace in your deafness…

Or you beat…

At best, it’s a bad line…

You are my window…

There has to be a country…

A spy…

Washed up at the tideline…

One day you woke to find that you’d lost barley…

Stalled…

Philosophy’s come home…

The wind tonight…

One of us is a module in orbit…

Names…

The White Sea…

Triptych

Deep Field

Mule

Something Like The Sea

II

:

On the shores of Lake Aphasia…

I wish I could say…

Where can you go back