Gavin Bantock

Gavin Bantock (born July 4, 1939) is an English-Japanese poet; he is the grandson of Granville Bantock.[1] He was born in Barnt Green, and attended New College, Oxford, where he won the Richard Hillary prize for poetry.[2][3] He traveled to Japan in 1964 on the advice of his father, Raymond, and returned five years later to teach at Reitaku University.[1] He has remained in the country ever since. Initially teaching English language and literature at Reitaku, he began also leading a group of students in productions of English plays, which eventually became his primary career. After retiring from Reitaku in 1994, he became the drama coach at Meitoku Gijuku High School in Kochi.[1]

Many of Bantock's poems treat elements of Christianity, history, mythology, or medieval and Renaissance literature in arresting, often disturbing terms. His book-length poem "Christ," first published in 1965 and issued in a revised edition in 2020, is skeptical of "any idea of an innate and preordained divinity in an incarnate Christ," according to Adrian A. Husain's introduction to the revised edition.[4] His poems "Joy" and "Dirge" were included by Philip Larkin in the The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse.[5] John Matthias included excerpts from Bantock's "Hiroshima," which Matthias calls "terrifying," in the collection 23 Modern British Poets.[3]