"This country is dead or dying of its false materialism. Where the mistake is made is in seeing life as a purely material thing" wrote the poet Patrick Kavanagh in his short-lived Kavanagh's Weekly in April, 1952. Included in the list of symptoms of death are: an inability to think and the depreciation of thinking and reflecting, financial greed, emigration, sensational vulgarity, romanticized Irishness, the stupidity and mediocrity of politicians who offer no integrative vision, and a religion that has not the energy to carry meaning because its core, spirituality has run dry. His comments remain valid in 2025. True materialism, for Kavanagh, on the other hand is that "which is based on realities, which brings and enthusiasm for life, (which) ... itself is a sort of madness, something out of a transcendent imagination". The energetic reality of life and health comes from the imagination. Allowing it to roam through our being gives us a new perspective on the reality of life and health. What does this mean and how does Kavanagh understand imagination? For Kavanagh, reality of life and health takes shape in a network of relationships in which every human being is involved with their environment. Its centre is "man-in-this-world". Each human being relates firstly, to other human beings in this network, secondly, to the material environment, and thirdly, to the source of material and human creation which the believer usually names as God. Using this network of relationships, this paper intends to explore, through the inspiration of Kavanagh's writings in poetry, especially the Canal Bank Sonnets written as he recovered from cancer treatment, the contemporary crises of contemporary western civilisation and culture, and to imagine a better quality of life and health beyond them.