My Brother Goes Down to the Sea is John Gribble’s second full-length collection. The poems explore various bodies of water – ranging in size from from ponds in public parks to the Pacific Ocean – along with family lives and stories, relationships, elegiac memories, works of art and music, and sharp-eyed observations of everyday Tokyo..

 The book also explores forms from various traditions, including the ghazal from the Middle East and Indian subcontinent, Japanese haibun, haiku, and senryu, as well as the soneto, a new fourteen-line form based on various traditional Japanese forms.

Billy Mills has written about My Brother Goes Down to the Sea in his Elliptical Movements blog: ‘There’s a quiet mastery in [his] lines that stems from Gribble’s control of form.… Gribble has the poet’s ear, without a doubt.’ Click here to read the whole review.

Click here to read an excerpt from this book.