Vanishing Point by Colin Bancroft

The poems in 'Vanishing Point' are unapologetically ecocritical in their engagement with the world. Saying this, the collection is not the drum-banging, snooker disrupting environmentalism that is often associated with the mode, but a quieter, more reflective understanding of our relationship with the natural world. In the mid-20th century American poet Robinson Jeffers coined the term ‘Inhumanism' which he described as ‘a shifting of emphasis from man to not man; the rejection of human solipsism and recognition of the transhuman magnificence'. It is this idea that the poems in ‘Vanishing Point' explore, that the world is not innately anthropocentric in its processes and cycles, that nature is indifferent to the success of the human race, and that people have a duty to celebrate and care for the planet. These ideas are explored in ‘Vanishing Point' through both personal experience and engagement with cultural, social and natural histories.