"I’m reading Proust at bedtime, to be lulled by the swirling currents of imponderable syntax."
Award-winning poet Philip Gross discusses the influence of origins and the “essential nutrient” of collaboration in our latest Artist Q&A.
Where are you from and how does it influence your work?
Ah, ‘from’… That word begs a lot of questions. Born in Delabole, North Cornwall… Brought up in Plymouth… 20 years bringing up a family in Bristol… 20 years since, in a different life in South Wales. Each feels like a species of ‘from’ to me – as does Estonia, my father‘s homeland. Visiting there, finding family, making friends, backfills another kind of ‘from’. All of those places are a part of me, so part of my writing too, as is the fact that they are several, shifting, not to be taken for granted.
Where are you while you answer these questions, what can you see when you look up from the page/screen?
Ironically, in transit – to poetry event in Manchester. I began this answer in a crowded station café, during a long delay…. and continued it, in motion – right now with a white froth of trackside hawthorn bushes going by. Unkempt, irrepressible stuff, I love it. And I’m typing it up now, another now, at my desk, in Penarth. Looking up, I see a painted stone, a mini-memorial to my father, on loan from Scottish artist Peter White as part of his concern for refugees.
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