Philip Terry & Marina Warner: Dante’s Purgatorio

In his 2014 Dante’s Inferno poet and provocateur Philip Terry moved the action to Essex University. His Purgatorio (Carcanet) transports us to nearby Mersea Island, where Ted Berrigan leads our author up an artificial mountain to meet with artists Grayson Perry, Rachel Whiteread and Damien Hirst, as well as Christopher Marlowe, Boris Johnson, Lady Diana, Jean Paul Getty, Hilary Clinton, Allen Ginsberg, Samuel Beckett, Martin McGuinness, Ciaran Carson and Anoushka Shankar. The poem comes to a climax with an interview with Marina Warner in the LRB Tent, followed by a gig from the Pogues, for which Shane MacGowan has been brought up from Hell on an Arts Council scheme.

In a clear case of life imitating art Terry was at the shop to read from and talk about Purgatorio with the real Marina Warner, acclaimed mythographer, historian and iconologist.