Reviews of early collections
 

No School Tie, 2011, Ward Wood Publishing
 

In No School Tie, Peter looks back at his boarding school days and forward with the birth of twin grandchildren. He listens in on imaginary conversations and monologues, remembers poet Julia Casterton and ponders on love and its effect in poems that, like life itself, blend sadness and humour.
 
The book’s title, No School Tie, refers to the time in the 1960s, when he was sent to boarding school in Sussex. It was a period when homesickness and sexual awakening fought with anxiety, antisemitism, cricket and new friendships.
 

… An accessible and unpretentious poet whose verse is always concise and musical, Peter Phillips wears his seriousness lightly. He is a breath of fresh air.

David Cooke, Stand 198, January 2013

[Phillips] is a poet whose humanity and good sense are consistently deployed without self-aggrandisement or undue flamboyance; a poet well worth reading.

Glyn Purslove, Acumen 71, September 2011

This is a gentle, sincere, humane collection… easy to read – as easy as flicking through a collection of family photographs … the detail is particular, precise and potent.

Helena Nelson, Ambit 206, October 2011

Wide Skies, Salt and Best Bitter, 2005, Hearing Eye.
 

The tone is witty, both innocent and knowing, aware of the unstated opposite point of view and the daftness of the sophisticated play. His language is accurate, shaggy, Anglo-Saxon and almost syllabic – ‘the scruff of the forest’, the ‘slosh of marshes’, ‘a shoal of rain’, ‘clouds large as parks’. But combed words come where needed… This joyous, enjoyable, unpretentious romp, where the art conceals considerable art, is more serious than it looks.

Herbert Lomas, Ambit 185, Summer 2006

The Norfolk sequences occupy the first half of the book and have the simple but precise visual artistry of a Thomas Bewick… Perhaps we too often sniff suspiciously at the light-hearted and sunny in poetry; perhaps we too seldom meet it, unalloyed by sentimentality or jokiness. Here we do.

Michael Standen, Other Poetry, Spring 2006

Looking for You, 2001, Hearing Eye.
 

In Looking for You, Peter Phillips portrays a tense, anxious, colourful, sexy, eccentric, enjoyable world as he explores the key relationships in his life through a series of poems.
 
The sequence ‘Looking For You’ charts the insidious onset of Alzheimer’s disease in his mother, moving on to other sequences dealing with the death of his first wife and subsequently finding new love. ‘Night Tales’ takes us into the poet’s intimate night-time world, while ‘Fox Tales’ records some off-beat encounters with foxes.
 
In between, he turns to such diverse subjects as camels In Camden Town, hypochondria, cows and human frailty as he whizzes you from his native London to Prague, Palm Beach, the French Riviera and New York, taking in the Lake District and Scotland on the way.

The book is a triumph of the comic (the word is used in no trivial sense) spirit… A moving collection.

Glyn Purslove, Acumen

Frayed at the Edges, 1997, Hearing Eye.
 

… for all its wicked accuracy, this is a serious and tender collection, opening with a variety of love poems, moving on to wider themes, including some more sombre and deeply affecting poems about the key relationships in his life.

Now that poetry is going back looking for the public it left behind, Peter Phillips should pick up support… This is a first collection of undoubted promise.

Sam Gardiner, Seam