The poet Patrick Featherston – anyone know anything?

Hi everyone,

I encountered this poem, from 1958, in “New Departures” (got it from British Library)

The text is this –

Nothing less than the solar core

is good enough

A living cell, a unique specimen

described by its discoverers

as ’eminently newsworthy,’

turned out, upon severe microscopy,

to be compact of mud, cities,

carbon dioxide, fogs, trafficjams,

seediness personified or institutionalized,

in short a little world

that would have been miraculous

if only things had been different.

I know nothing about “Patrick Featherston”. Am assuming he is/was American (institutionalized instead of institutionalised).

Does anyone know anything?

Btw, there’s a band called the Jazz Butcher, and the late lead singer had clearly read the poem, because he used it in a lyric of a song called Solar Core.