Recreation Ground is the first full-length poetry collection by Tom Phillips, published by Two Rivers Press in 2012. ISBN 978-1-901677-85-0, 56 pp., £7.95. Cover design by Nadja Guggi with illustrations by Peter Hay. Text design by Nadja Guggi
Description
Tom Phillips’ first full-length collection navigates terrains which range from Eastern Europe, Australia and the Home Counties to his own back garden in Bristol.
From the different perspectives these vantage points offer, it unearths connections between chance meetings and ‘big history’, family stories and the state we’re in. It also looks at poetry itself as a ground on which to recreate–and negotiate with–one thing that nobody can change: the past.
‘In Tom Phillips’ work, the world is unsettlingly close, whether the poem is set in his home town or at the other end of Europe. Other times, too, are alongside in the present, and echoes of conflict or loss disturb the surfaces of life, which are nonetheless carefully, caringly observed in these intelligent and watchful poems.’-- Philip Gross
‘The landscape of Tom Phillips’ poetry is an “unexpected geography” within the contours of which we are reawakened to recognition that meaning amid a world of war and confusion is to be discovered in the unchanging nature of small things.’-- Ian Brinton
‘Those who have followed Tom Phillips’ steady progression over nearly thirty years value him as, in some real sense, the quietly spoken voice of a generation.’-- Tony Lewis-Jones
From the different perspectives these vantage points offer, it unearths connections between chance meetings and ‘big history’, family stories and the state we’re in. It also looks at poetry itself as a ground on which to recreate–and negotiate with–one thing that nobody can change: the past.
‘In Tom Phillips’ work, the world is unsettlingly close, whether the poem is set in his home town or at the other end of Europe. Other times, too, are alongside in the present, and echoes of conflict or loss disturb the surfaces of life, which are nonetheless carefully, caringly observed in these intelligent and watchful poems.’-- Philip Gross
‘The landscape of Tom Phillips’ poetry is an “unexpected geography” within the contours of which we are reawakened to recognition that meaning amid a world of war and confusion is to be discovered in the unchanging nature of small things.’-- Ian Brinton
‘Those who have followed Tom Phillips’ steady progression over nearly thirty years value him as, in some real sense, the quietly spoken voice of a generation.’-- Tony Lewis-Jones
