Philip Hobsbaum | |
|---|---|
| Born | Philip Dennis Hobsbaum (1932-06-29)29 June 1932 London, England |
| Died | 28 June 2005(2005-06-28) (aged 72) |
| Education | Belle Vue Boys' Grammar School |
| Alma mater | Downing College, Cambridge University of Sheffield |
| Occupations |
|
Philip Dennis Hobsbaum (29 June 1932 – 28 June 2005)[1] was a British teacher,poet and critic.[2]
Hobsbaum was born into a PolishJewish family inLondon, and brought up inBradford,Yorkshire, where he attendedBelle Vue Boys' Grammar School.[3] He read English atDowning College, Cambridge, where he was taught and heavily influenced byF. R. Leavis. At Cambridge he took over the editing of the magazinedelta fromPeter Redgrove. After Cambridge, he worked as a school teacher in London from 1955 to 1959, when he moved toSheffield to study for a PhD underWilliam Empson. In 1962, he took up an academic position atQueen's University, Belfast, and moved again in 1966,[4] to take up a post in theUniversity of Glasgow. He was awarded a personal chair in 1985, and retired from the university in 1997; he remained in Glasgow until his death in 2005.
Hobsbaum's most direct impact on literature was as the animating force behindThe Group, a sequence of writing workshops in Cambridge, London,Belfast andGlasgow, in turn. Although there was some slight overlap in personnel withThe Movement, the various incarnations of the Group had a more concrete existence and a more practical focus.
The Cambridge Group was initially concerned with the oral performance of poetry, but soon turned into an exercise inpractical criticism and mutual support for a network of poets. This Group relocated to London when Hobsbaum moved there in 1955, becomingThe Group, and continuing until 1965, chaired byEdward Lucie-Smith after Hobsbaum's departure for Sheffield.
On arriving in Sheffield (c.1959–1962), he immediately organized the "Writers' Group" for the university's undergraduates and startedPoetry from Sheffield, a magazine for their poetry but which also had poems byGeorge MacBeth,Peter Redgrove andFrancis Berry. He wrote about the group inThe Times Literary Supplement, published on 14 April 1961. Barry Fox took over the chair when Hobsbaum left to concentrate on his thesis.
In Belfast (1962–1966), Hobsbaum organised a new weekly discussion group, which became known asThe Belfast Group and included the emerging authorsJohn Bond,Seamus Heaney,Michael Longley,Derek Mahon,Stewart Parker andBernard MacLaverty.
In Glasgow, Hobsbaum became once again the nucleus of a group of new and distinctive authors, includingAlasdair Gray,Liz Lochhead,James Kelman,Tom Leonard,Aonghas MacNeacail andJeff Torrington. This group continued to meet until 1975, and unlike the previous groups developed a more pronounced focus on prose than on poetry. As an encore, Hobsbaum was instrumental in setting up, in 1995, the successfulMLitt increative writing at the University of Glasgow.
Though he was a poet as well, it was as a critic that Hobsbaum was best known. Although as one of his obituarists noted, "[h]e was famously not a man who felt a pressing need to endear himself to students", he was a charismatic teacher, and fiercely committed to those with a commitment to literature. The dedication of Alasdair Gray'sThe Book of Prefaces is "to Philip Hobsbaum poet, critic and servant of servants of art". Seamus Heaney also dedicated the poem "Blackberry-Picking" (fromDeath of a Naturalist, 1966) to Philip Hobsbaum.
