The Wasting Game by Philip Gross

The Wasting Game by Philip Gross

Of an earlier book, Terry Eagleton wrote: '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...a landscape bereft of assured relationships, haunted by the just-missedness of human contact' (Independent on Sunday). These new poems reach towards closer engagement, whether with the realities of Estonia, his father's birthplace - visited for the first time - or with other loves and longings, never uncomplicated but handled even at their most difficult with tenderness and wit, nowhere more so that in the title-sequence about his daughter's struggle with anorexia. In the end, this is a book of life and hope.

At the core of this new collection are the harrowing and beautiful poems in which a father witnesses his daughter's near-fatal struggle with anorexiaThere is terror at watching a child shrink to bone, longing to bring her back to the sunlit world, anger, remorse, and above all an agonised love which resonates throughout the poems. These are elegies for the living, piercing in their clarity and depth of feeling -- Helen Dunmore

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). His 19th collection, A Bright Acoustic (2017), follows nine previous 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 won a Cholmondeley Award in 2017. Philip Gross's 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).

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781852244798
ISBN 10	1852244798
Title	The Wasting Game
Author	Philip Gross
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Year published	1998-09-23
Number of pages	80
Prizes	Short-listed for Whitbread Prize (Poetry) 1998, Short-listed for Whitbread Book Awards: Poetry Category 1998
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable