Synopsis:
High above the plain, up where the mountainside melts into cloud, lies an unmapped plateau: Kantaris' son was in Colombia, and he told her about Mistila. She mentioned it to Gross. In response, he sent her a poem. She replied. In three months they populated the Mistilan plateau with a cast of characters who live, eke out their livelihoods, and die. Like us, almost. This collaboration between two poets was a Poetry Book Society Choice.
About the Authors:
Born in Cornwall, son of an Estonian wartime refugee, Philip Gross has lived in Plymouth, Bristol and South Wales, where he was Professor of Creative Writing at Glamorgan University (USW). His 19th collection, A Bright Acoustic (2017), follows nine previous books with Bloodaxe, including Love Songs of Carbon (2015), winner of the Roland Mathias Poetry Award (Wales Book of the Year), also a Poetry Book Society Recommendation; Later (2013); Deep Field (2011), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, which was shortlisted for the Roland Mathias Poetry Award (Wales Book of the Year); The Water Table (2009), winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize; The Egg of Zero (2006); Mappa Mundi (2003), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation; and Changes of Address: Poems 1980-1998 (2001), his selection from earlier books including The Ice Factory, Cat’s Whisker, The Son of the Duke of Nowhere, I.D. and The Wasting Game. His book I Spy Pinhole Eye (Cinnamon Press, 2009), a collaborative work with photographer Simon Denison, won the Wales Book of the Year Award 2010. He won a Cholmondeley Award in 2017. Philip Gross's poetry for children includes Manifold Manor, The All-Nite Café (winner of the Signal Award 1994), Scratch City and Off Road To Everywhere (winner of the CLPE Award 2011). Since The Song of Gail and Fludd (1991) he has published nine more novels for young people, most recently The Storm Garden (2006).
Sylvia Kantaris was born in 1936 in Derbyshire Peak District. She studied French at Bristol University, taught in Bristol and London, and then spent ten years in Australia, where she taught French at Queensland University, had two children, and wrote her M.A. and Ph.D. theses on French surrealism. Her articles on surrealism and poems were published widely in Australia and England in major periodicals and anthologies, including The Penguin Book of Modern Australian Verse. She was the joint winner of the Poetry Magazine Award in 1969. In 1974 she settled in Helston, Cornwall, and from 1976 to 1984 tutored Twentieth Century Poetry for the Open University. In 1986 she was appointed Cornwall’s first Writer in the Community, and in 1989 received an honorary D.Litt. from Exeter University. Her first two books of poems, Time & Motion (Prism/Poetry Society of Australia, 1975) and the Tenth Muse (Peterloo Poets, 1983), were both reissued by Menhir Press in 1986. Her third collection, The Sea at the Door (Secker & Warburg, 1985), is no longer available. She published two joint collections with other poets, News from the Front with D.M. Thomas (Arc, 1983), and The Air Mines of Mistila with Philip Gross (Bloodaxe Books, 1988), a Poetry Book Society Choice. Her other poetry titles are Dirty Washing: New & Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 1989), including work from all her previous books except The Air Mines of Mistila, and a new collection, Lad's Love (Bloodaxe Books, 1993).
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