Off Road to Everywhere - Softcover

Gross, Philip; Gross, Phillip

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1844717224 ISBN 13: 9781844717224

Publisher: Salt Publishing, 2010

Synopsis

Winner of the CLPE Poetry Awards 2011 Philip Gross's classics of poetry for children, Manifold Manor, The All-Nite Café and Scratch City, set a benchmark in the 1990s for opening doors to rich worlds of language and imagination. Off Road To Everywhere takes the challenge into a new century. These poems grow out of twenty years of creative writing work with young people, inviting readers to click out of passive consumer mode and think like writers themselves. Sequences like 'Dreams of an Inland Lighthouse Keeper' offer games, techniques and exercises to be used in writing groups for many ages. This is multi-layered poetry, playful, thoughtful and technically brilliant - as gripping in performance as it is on the page. Inviting but completely unpatronising to young readers, welcoming to adults who think that they don't like poetry, these poems open our eyes to the world and to the riches of language as the birthright of everyone. They speak to all ages, and sit confidently on the bookshelf next to Philip Gross's prize-winning work for adults.

About this title

About the Author

Philip Gross is a writer of many parts - from prize-winning poetry to teenage novels of high suspense and unsettling depths. Son of a wartime refugee from Estonia and a Cornish schoolmaster's daughter, his work explores borderlines - between childhood and adult life, between fantasy and reality. He has two grown-up children and a grandson, and lives in Penarth with his wife Zelie. He has led writing workshops in schools for twenty years, and is Professor of Creative Writing at Glamorgan University.

Review

... an elegant exhibition of craftsmanship and intellectual mystery .... You go back to Philip Gross's poems as they re-echo in your head ... Here is writing at the upper edge of children's poetry--Signal Award judges' report "Signal Award for Poetry for Children "

This is a world of playful conceits and chilly intimations in which voices carry on the wind, lost souls press for recognition, doors become mirrors and mirrors doors. Wordplay is the key to understanding, and the whole enterprise is cleverly designed to nudge young readers into an awareness that through their own writing they can unlock more than they might have bargained for.--Times Educational Supplement

An exciting and original poet ... He is prepared to take risks. He challenges with rich and unusual language, and he takes poetry for children into a territory of strong emotions, often hauntingly expressed. There is no one else writing quite as he does.--Helen Dunmore "Poetry Review "

Edition details

• Publisher: Salt Publishing
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1844717224
• ISBN 13: 9781844717224
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 100
• Illustrator: Gross Jonathan