The North End of the Possible

How do isolation, belonging and the land shape us? What difference does this make to how we live? Andrew Philip's second collection delves deep into these and other questions. In the opening and closing portions of the book, Philip takes us further into the life of MacAdam - an enigmatic character from his multi-award nominated debut, The Ambulance Box.

MacAdam, who seems to have built a version of the Large Hadron Collider in his garden shed, attempts to find "the fundamental particle of night".

We follow him into the chaos that results, as his experiments run out of control, culminating in a powerful encounter with a mysterious intruder. The middle of the collection brings us poems of place, love and politics.

A newsreader's BBC English transmogrifies into Scots without her realising.

Edinburgh's worst piper is lambasted in a rollicking Burns pastiche that led novelist Rodge Glass to dub Philip his "new favourite poet". And an intricate, tender sequence charts the highs and lows of a decade of marriage. Rich in humour, imaginative reach and formal invention, The North End of the Possible displays a fresh strength in narrative writing for Philip and pushes his lyric gifts to new heights.