The Water Table — Philip Gross

Winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize. 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 Mr 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. 'A book of great clarity and concentration, continually themed but always lively and alert in its use of language. Gross takes us from Great Flood to subtly invoked concerns for our watery planet; this is a mature and determined book, dream-like inplaces, but dealing ultimately with real questions of human existence'
-- Simon Armitage, T.S. Eliot Prize judges' comment.