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The Group was an informal group of poets who met inLondon from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s. As a poetic movement inGreat Britain it is often seen as being the successor toThe Movement.
In November1952 while atDowning College,Cambridge University,Philip Hobsbaum along with two friends—Tony Davis and Neil Morris—dissatisfied with the way poetry was read aloud in the university, decided to place a notice in the undergraduate newspaperVarsity for people interested in forming a poetry discussion group. Five others, includingPeter Redgrove, came along to the first meeting. This poetry discussion group met once a week during term.
When Hobsbaum moved to London, the discussion group reconstituted itself there. It is this London group that is now referred to asThe Group.
TheLondon meetings started in1955 once a week, on Friday evenings, at first at Hobsbaum's flat and later at the house ofEdward Lucie-Smith. The poets gathered to discuss each other's work, putting into practice the sort of analysis and objective comment in keeping with the principles of Hobsbaum's Cambridge tutorF. R. Leavis and of theNew Criticism in general. Before each meeting about six or seven poems by one poet would be typed, duplicated and distributed to the dozen or so participants.
There was no manifesto as such. Lucie-Smith wrote, in a letter to Hobsbaum dated November 1961: 'This is a group of poets who find it possible to meet and discuss each other's work helpfully and without backbiting or backscratching…we have no axe to grind — this isn't a gang and there's no monolithic body of doctrine to which everyone must subscribe'.
The poets who met includedGeorge MacBeth,Edward Lucie-Smith,Philip Hobsbaum,Peter Redgrove,Alan Brownjohn,Peter Porter andMartin Bell.Ted Hughes occasionally attended.
The chairmanship of the group passed toEdward Lucie-Smith in1959 when Hobsbaum left London to study inSheffield. The meetings continued at his house in Chelsea, and the circle of poets expanded to includeFleur Adcock,Taner Baybars,Edwin Brock, andZulfikar Ghose; others includingNathaniel Tarn circulated poems for comment.[1]
Lucie-Smith and Hobsbaum editedA Group Anthology (London: Oxford University Press,1963); in the foreword the aim is described of writing 'frank autobiographical poems' and a 'poetry of direct experience'. In the anthology's epilogue Hobsbaum writes of the importance of discussion, and the writer's need for 'community to keep him in touch with his audience.'
Satire was prominent in the works of Bell, Brownjohn, and Porter.
When Hobsbaum moved toBelfast in 1962 he established a similar group there, sometimes referred to asThe Belfast Group.
After the publication and publicity associated with the publication of the anthology, numbers attending the weekly meetings increased, and the meetings became unworkable. In 1965 the Group was restructured, and the more formalThe Poets' Workshop was established under the influence ofMartin Bell.
