Gavin Bantock

Katharsis Gavin Bantock

POEMS FOR THE AGE OF CATACLYSM & PANDEMIC IN A WORLD THAT HAS LOST ITS MORAL COMPASS


Although these three poems were written fifty years ago (1960s), their contemporary immediacy makes them as vitally relevant and striking now as when they first appeared. The message throughout is clear - cataclysm, destruction and human suffering cannot be avoided, and there is only one path to paradise, through a catharsis of hell and purgatory.




The poems move through nuclear destruction (Hiroshima - Hell) towards a thorough cleansing of the world; through the trauma (Person - Purgatory) of suffering and self-discovery, and through a maelstrom of condemnation and rejection to physical and moral regeneration (Ichor - Paradise) as the ichor of fleshly wounds is restored to its original essence - the divine fluid flowing in the veins of the gods.

"And we can be the gods that tread the ways that never end."
"When I first read it, I found Hiroshima a terrifying poem, and I still do. It celebrates the bombing as a prefiguration of an atomic holocaust that will cleanse the world in order to prepare the way for new species and an ecologically coherent planet. The poem calls the bomb "Christ," and worships its destruction. The bomb is a new god." John Matthias
"[Person], a sustained and moving exploration of human identity and suffering. Peter Jay
"[Ichor], a strange work, terrible and touching, and its moments of agony and rage are consoled by others of serenity and humbleness; through it all, even in the passages of terror, pain, anger, hatred, blasphemy, and revulsion there is audible a pedal-point of human love, and so the inferno ascends to glimpses of paradiso. It seems to me new and absorbing... It is a prophetic poem... beyond past and future, and time itself... Big poems are rare; when a man is big enough to write one, we should be big enough to print it." Nevill Coghill
A video recording of the author reciting these poems can be viewed on YouTube at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3RdYT-i6Z4&feature=youtu.be