On HAUNTING THE GHOST by Victor Rees (Three Impostor, 2025)
Birmingham bred, the young man is now led by London,
Tracing the line of inked artists, still sacred books and lost films
From Roszak’s Flicker he finds the same source of enchantment
As I did, and from Ishiguro’s ghost Gourmet, Victor Rees
Can sculpt spirits from within Catling’s kiln. Rees has read
And seen things I love, having discovered them myself
When I started. So, to read of his findings is a particular treat:
An eye dream. As his PhD studies begin on the day
Of Catling’s death, his first subject, having had Alan Moore
Introduce him with Tempest’s allusions to The Vorrh,
Whose sound echoed in the young writer’s mind as fresh theme.
These short but delicious essays detail Rees’ steps to submersion
Not just in Moore and Catling’s work, but in Sinclair,
Who Rees sees as Mycroft to Catling’s ‘gravel tongued
Holmes’ as they read in bookshops and dreams,
With the myths they make representing a form of PR
For the hidden, as their wordwork ploughs for us,
Bearing mind-fruit and soul seed. On arriving in London,
Rees walks, so as to draw close to the city. His pilgrimage
Becomes poem as he moves from Dee’s scrying glass
In the BM to Swedenborg House, as if willed. He had
Read of a Catling event Sinclair snapped, with BC then
Eating the film from his camera, and heard of Swedenborg’s
Solar sojourn, amidst angels and ash. Victor’s thrilled
To have encountered so much, as should you, as the reader,
For in a handful of pages, there is enough food and feast
To supply any number of years. Already this slim book feels
Uncanny. It is a day Dante, but without a wood, just the city
Growing anew in the eye. But then Rees travels on, linked
By lunch, towards Bunhill. Sandwiching by Blake’s grave
His foot falters, and he feels he’s as altered as when
John Milton toed William. One gets the sense as one reads
That this tight tome is a true Pilgrim’s progress,
From the Bookartbookshop in Old Street, to a Chiara Ambrosio
Connection, Rees is introduced to the secrets which have
Comparatively few finding them. Ambrosio has filmed
Catling too, in St. Paul’s room for whispers, and so once again
There’s communion as a form of live haunting begins
For the lost. Rees becomes a Boswell of sorts to Catling’s
Johnson, and while there’s no cyclops present that one
Great vision soon splits to accost and influence the known
World and what it prefers to keep private, which this former
Student soon masters. In such scant years, he’s lived long;
From a trip to the Golem’s Guarantor, Rabbi Loew whilst
Visiting Prague, to the Bull-ring; from the lands of the Erstwhile,
To High Holborns and Hells and God songs. Rees receives much,
Including Catling’s unknown writings and drawings. Curiously,
He’s affected, his body unable to cope with the stream
In which so few researchers can swim, but Rees is soaked,
It seems, weekly. As a surburbanite starting, I dreamt of
Immersions like this. Its the dream that he is having by day
And which this prized pamphlet poems. For while written
As prose there’s a cadence to the way that he writes
Which enchants. He can also work a room well. And not
Many can. As writer and performer, a victor. At the start
Of his career there’s such promise as can be seen and poured
From each page: a mage stance. As he stages each scene,
And moves to Sinclair, whose White Chappel and Scarlet Tracings
Alter egoes more chorale, more connection, thanks to Catling’s
S.L. Joblard depict and word dare, which only engenders more men.
Catling truly is Man as Magic, acting for Rees like a Milton,
Or an Old Bill Blake, or John Clare; an imagined Magus,
Part glimpsed and for one moment, emailed, before sliding back
Into myth, pinstripe jacket diluting in the Lethe led mist
As dream flare. And then onto Venice; more ground, and more
Soul stirred water to contemplate Arthur Machen, who his publisher
Three Impostors now house. Rees sources a Vorrh connection
At once, effortlessly scribing salvation. After one year in London,
Rees has unearthed a life which allows not only the dead
To unearth and the ghost to be haunted, but for dutiful care
And attention and a strain of obsession as well to shine light
On the true life beneath, made epic by Catling, and by Sinclair
And Moore, Machen, Roszak and Ishiguro too, Michael Whyte.
And by Ambrosio, Kevin O’ Neill, Yannis Ritsos, and by David
And Tomos Osmond; here all are bespectacled with foresight.
These 33 pages astound. This lad has been lucky. But luck is a gift
Some God granted, whether he lived the same number of years,
Or remains in partial shadow and dreams such as Flicker’s
Max Castle once charted. There are signal codes, there are sigils
That for many are secret. So with Victor Rees, relearn language.
He seems to truly understands what it means.
David Erdos 2/10/25
http://www.threeimpostors.co.uk
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