LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR POETRY 2024.

A work that reminds us of the singular and glorious power of poetry in our complex world.

Silver is a collection that shines with a guiding principle, that poetry: 'part physics, part faith, part void', can be found wherever it is looked for. Virtuosic in style, sharing the dexterity of the legendary Argentinian footballer, Lionel Messi, who is conjured in its pages, the poems shape-shift through blank verse, elegy, terza rima and rap. Phillips is confident in his unconfidence: 'Not the meaning,' he writes, 'but the meaningfulness of this mystery we call life'. The poems are luminous and dreamlike in their evocations of time and place, held in the light of a silvery moon that gives them their alluring strangeness and vibrancy.