The movement poetry: an overview

The British poetry of the 1950s were marked by the rejection of poetic insight of the previous decade. The process perhaps began with the sarcastic conservatism of Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis and John Wain who were together at Oxford.  The immense popularity of Dylan Thomas provoked the anger and envy of many of his contemporaries. As a reaction to his ‘excesses’, there began in England a new school of poetry that came to be called as ‘The Movement’. The main spokesmen of which were Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis and D.J Enright who voiced their resentment primarily against Dylan Thomas.

 

Robert Conquest who edited the anthology ‘New Lines’ in 1956, was equally vehement against Dylan Thomas. He reacted against the style of him as sentimental and hollow and themes as lack of wisdom and mere nostalgias of childhood.

The origins of movement poetry may be traced to a series of events in the years that followed by the death of Dylan Thomas. There appeared an anonymous article in the Spectator, the purpose of which apparently to ring out the current poetic norms and usher in a new era in poetic fashion. With this aim, the article spoke at length about the changing times and how ,change being the law of life, it is but desirable that literature, too should change accordingly. Literary tastes keep changing, and a new age has its own brand of sensibility which must be expressed in new language.  The Spectator article was simply a harbinger of what was to follow. It prepared a suitable background and suggested that a new generation of writers had now emerged on the literary scene. More suited to the changed world of the fifties. These writers of the new “Movement” thus emerged as a reaction to the older generation of the poets. They were described as taking on a stance antithetical to that of T.S Eliot and his notions as he cultivated a deliberate complexity. The group of poets emerged in the fifties consider the world as materialistic, evil and boring.

Two other events in the following years are important landmarks in the evolution of the new poetic movement. The first was the publication of ‘Poets of the Nineteen Fifties’ by D.J Enright in 1955, and the other was ‘New Lines’, published by Robert Conquest in 1956. These two anthologies together published the work of nine new poets who were considered as Avant Garde, heralding a change in literary taste. Apart from D.J Enright and Robert Conquest, the poets were Kingsley Amis, Donald Davie, John Halloway, Elizabeth Jennings, John Wain, Thom Gunn and Philip Larkin. Today when we speak of the “Movement”, we generally refer to this group of loosely linked poets. It is a reactionary movement in the sense that these poets share a mutual dislike for their immediate predecessors in poetry. Their resistance to existing poetic norms holds this assorted group together.

It manifests an outright reaction against T.S Eliot and Ezra Pound. For them, Eliot was a negative influence on literature and something had to be done to counter it. The modernist movement advocated a new way of looking at life, a new form and mode through which to express the sensibility of the age. Larkin and his friend disputed each tenet of modernism. In fact Philip Larkin went to the extent of saying that Ezra Pound, Pablo Picasso and Charlie Parker were three villains of the age. What Pound the most influential figure of modern poetry, the unconventional painter Picasso and the controversial modern Jazz saxophonist Parker had in common was the spirit of innovation. Ezra Pound with Eliot, became very much weary of overused poetic modes. Advocated a new way of approaching poetry directly with the minimalistic approach by creating images striking for their clarity and appropriateness.

The Movement poets were mainly antagonistic towards Eliot because much of his work is too clever and too allusive to be understood by the common man. His poetry makes far too many assumptions and too many demands on the reader. It is not meant for relaxation, not suited to leisurely reading. It needs a special kind of audience, not only familiar with the collective mind of Europe, but also aware of the entire history of human kind from ancient times to the contemporary scene. It does not soothe and satisfy the reader into a hushed acceptance of reality.  The appeal of such poetry is inevitably to the minority of readers who are aware of needs other than the physical. Eliot, certainly, is unsuited to the ordinary man whose concerns are generally limited to daily routine and the mundane aspects of existence. A new kind of poetry was the need of the day, so Larkin and his friends were convinced.