"COMING HOME" (1991, first book)
Coming Home is derived philosophically from the writings of an Indian mystic, named by his followers Meher Baba.

'Coming Home' also includes an alternative Dark Age Celtic and mediaeval French take on the same Arthurian legend as part of its survey of Western history.

Purchase Information
“Coming Home” is a King Of Hearts Publication. A taped performance dramatising the book (the author with two actresses and a sax player) is also available.

For information on how to purchase the book and tape please visit the purchase page.

Some articles and soundbites

Remarkable Collection of Poems
“Coming Home” is the most remarkable first collection I have encountered. Gareth Calway at 36 writes with the wisdom and experience of twice that age.

Difficult even to think of this poet in terms of temporal experience, for he writes as a mystic and about subjects as far above modern poetic concerns as the moon is above a roadside pebble.

The book’s theme is the human journey, and includes the three great metaphysical questions:what are we? what is our purpose here? and have we a future beyond human incarnation?

This of course is the road Bunyan trod, Blake saw, Eliot stumbled on and left. Mr Calway stays with it, dividing his exploration into three sections: Evolution where Purpose tracks through Creation to its apparent ultimate in Man; Ghosts, section two, examines humanity’s obsessive expansion of self-interest (from Ancient Greece to the Holocaust); and the sequence ends with Involution, which veers at last from self-interest towards self-surrender to the Love/Life motive force.

Perhaps nothing so profound has hit the poetry world since Eliot’s Four Quartets. Mr Calway is as experimental as Eliot in his choice of form, and bolder, for the thrid section uses the highly compressed and disciplined Persian ghazal, an uncommon vehicle for a European writer.

But beyond technique, Gareth Calway appears powered by an exterior vision, seeing fundamental truths and expressing them through a stream of consciousness method.

The work reads easily and there are some highly quotable lines - “Pleasure’s merely pain deferred”; and often more is conveyed by the sound than sense of the words - though not in the Dylan Thomas helter-skelter fashion.

Coming Home is a record of the spirit’s journey and its ultimate resolution; or, as in music, a passing of discord into concord. Ultimately it speaks of the release of the divine potential latent within all creation: a huge theme.

In 10 years time, this poet will probably be an international name. At present he lives and works in Norfolk and in this volume gives us memorable individual poems within a marvellous framework.
Joan Forman, Eastern Daily Press 09/01/92


“Real poetry... characteristically sustained and lyrical... there is a strong Classical and Historical feel to this work; traditional - but enviably so. The poet skilfully empathizes with his subject; acts out the role and brings alive the thoughts of his chosen character... I enjoyed this book; was impressed by its comments; clean design and well-executed printing. I would say it was worth every penny.”
Haiku Quarterly

“Thanks for showing me your poems (The Evolution sequence). I really do like them a lot. In fact, I felt a kind of affinity. They were wholesome and strong and to my tastes. Simple in the best way, the real way. I greatly like the tenacious way you work things through. And the language all of a piece.”
Letter from Ted Hughes, 20/04/87