Challenging and tender, these poems are a rite of passage. Philip Gross’s much praised previous collection, Deep Field, explored the loosening connections between the self and language in his refugee father’s old age. This new book goes further, through the failing of the body, through the mind’s weakening hold on the borderline between the present and the traumas of the past. It follows the journey to the end - then beyond, to the tentative byways through which mourning moves. With an instinct for form that both controls and releases depths of feeling, Philip Gross writes poetry that proves it can be trusted with the most raw yet essential things of life.