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Philip Gross: TheThirteenth Angel• Thomas Kinsella: Last Poems• Clive Donovan: Wound Up with Love • Nicholas Murray: Elsewhere: Collected Poems of Nicholas Murray • Harold Massingham: Selected Poems

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The Thirteenth Angel by Philip Gross, 2022. £12. Bloodaxe Books. ISBN 978-1-78037-635-6 Reviewed by Jill Sharp

Philip Gross has form when it comes to angels. His 2009 T S Eliot Prize-winning collection The Water Table begins with a poem describing water surging through the gates of a lock: how it curves and feathers like an angel’s wings. Throughout that superb collection his interest in the qualities of water, transparency and indeed angels, becomes vividly apparent.

The Thirteenth Angel, his 27th book of poetry, is another refreshingly outward-looking collection, comprising a series of long, descriptive/contemplative pieces interleaved with shorter poems. Reading the whole book is a deeply absorbing, enlightening and thought-provoking experience…