Gavin Bantock, the Prominent Poet

Reading my diary, I was provoked once again by remembering "Ichor" a provocative poem by Gavin Bantock!
Is Bantock a forgotten poet?

Gavin Bantock has written four extensive poems, of which two, `Ichor' and `Hiroshima', appeared in magazines and one, `Juggernaut', as a pamphlet (Anvil Press Poetry, 1968). In these his poetic discipline has tautened, though as Kevin Crossley-Holland wrote he `is not afraid to think big, to stick out his neck, and to write of man's fragile vanity'.

This book contains what we consider to be the finest of these poems, `Person', a sustained and moving exploration of the nature of human identity and suffering; together with eleven short poems displaying a sure technique which is sensitive to a range of ideas and experience.

Gavin Bantock was born in 1939. He was educated at King's Norton GS, Birmingham and New College, Oxford where he wrote his long poem `Christ' (Donald Parsons, Oxford, 1965) which shared the Richard Hillary Award for 1964 and the Poetry Society's Alice Hunt-Bartlett Award for 1966.