English poetry
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[[Image:Shakespeare.jpg|right|thumbnail|250px|Many regard [[William Shakespeare]] as the greatest English poet.]]
The history of '''English poetry''' stretches from the middle of the 7th century to the present day. Over this period, English [[poets]] have written some of the most enduring poems in [[European culture]], and the language and its poetry have spread around the globe. Consequently, the term ''English poetry'' is unavoidably ambiguous. It can mean poetry written in [[England]], or poetry written in the [[English language]].
The earliest surviving poetry from the area currently known as England was likely transmitted orally and then written down in versions that do not now survive; thus, dating the earliest poetry remains difficult and often controversial. The earliest surviving manuscripts date from the 10th century. Poetry written in [[Latin language|Latin]], [[Brythonic]] (a predecessor language of [[Welsh language|Welsh]]) and [[Old Irish]] survives which may date as early as the 6th century. The earliest surviving poetry written in [[Old English language|Anglo-Saxon]], the most direct predecessor of modern English, may have been composed as early as the seventh century.
With the growth of [[trade]] and the British Empire, the English language had been widely used outside England. In the twenty-first century, only a small percentage of the world's native English speakers live in England, and there is also a vast population of non-native speakers of English who are capable of writing poetry in the language. A number of major national poetries, including the [[Poetry of the United States|American]], [[Australian poetry|Australian]], [[New Zealand]], [[Canadian poetry|Canadian]] and [[Indian English literature#poetry|Indian]] poetry have emerged and developed. Since 1922, Irish poetry has also been increasingly viewed as a separate area of study.
''This article focuses on poetry written in English by poets born or spending a significant part of their lives in England. However, given the nature of the subject, this guideline has been applied with common sense, and reference is made to poetry in other languages or poets who are not primarily English where appropriate.''
==The earliest English poetry==
{{main|Old English poetry}}
[[Image:Beowulf.firstpage.jpeg|thumb|right|The first page of [[Beowulf]]]]
The earliest known English poem is a hymn on the creation; [[Bede]] attributes this to [[Cædmon]] (fl. 658–680), who was, according to legend, an illiterate herdsman who produced extemporaneous poetry at a monastery at [[Whitby]].<ref>[[Bede]], [[Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum]].</ref> This is generally taken as marking the beginning of [[Old English poetry|Anglo-Saxon]] poetry.
Much of the poetry of the period is difficult to date, or even to arrange chronologically; for example, estimates for the date of the great epic ''[[Beowulf]]'' range from AD 608 right through to AD 1000, and there has never been anything even approaching a consensus.<ref>''See, for example,'' ''Beowulf: a Dual-Language Edition'', Doubleday, New York, NY, 1977; Newton, S., 1993. ''The Origins of Beowulf and the Pre-Viking Kingdom of East Anglia''. Cambridge.</ref> It is possible to identify certain key moments, however. ''[[Dream of the Rood|The Dream of the Rood]]'' was written before circa AD 700, when excerpts were carved in runes on the [[Ruthwell Cross]].<ref>Brendan Cassidy (ed.), ''The Ruthwell Cross'', Princeton University Press (1992).</ref> Some poems on historical events, such as ''[[Battle of Brunanburh|The Battle of Brunanburh]]'' (937) and the ''[[Battle of Maldon]]'' (991), appear to have been composed shortly after the events in question, and can be dated reasonably precisely in consequence.
By and large, however, Anglo-Saxon poetry is categorised by the manuscripts in which it survives, rather than its date of composition. The most important manuscripts are the four great poetical codices of the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, known as the [[Caedmon manuscript]], the [[Vercelli Book]], the [[Exeter Book]], and the [[Nowell Codex|Beowulf manuscript]].
While the poetry that has survived is limited in volume, it is wide in breadth. ''Beowulf'' is the only heroic epic to have survived in its entirety, but fragments of others such as [[Waldere]] and the [[Finnsburg Fragment]] show that it was not unique in its time. Other genres include much religious verse, from devotional works to biblical paraphrase; elegies such as ''[[Wanderer (poem)|The Wanderer]]'', ''[[Seafarer (poem)|The Seafarer]]'', and ''[[The Ruin]]'' (often taken to be a description of the ruins of [[Bath, Somerset|Bath]]); and numerous proverbs, [[riddles]], and [[charm]]s.
With one notable exception ([[The Rhyming Poem|Rhyming Poem]]), Anglo-Saxon poetry depends on [[alliterative verse]] for its structure and any rhyme included is merely [[ornament (music)|ornamental]].
==The Anglo-Norman period and the Later Middle Ages==
{{See also|Anglo-Norman literature}}
With the [[Norman conquest]] of England, beginning in 1111 the Anglo-Saxon language rapidly diminished as a written literary language. The new aristocracy spoke French, and this became the standard language of courts, parliament, and polite society. As the invaders integrated, their language and literature mingled with that of the natives: the French dialect of the upper classes became [[Anglo-Norman language|Anglo-Norman]], and Anglo-Saxon underwent a gradual transition into [[Middle English]].
While Anglo-Norman or Latin was preferred for high culture, English literature by no means died out, and a number of important works illustrate the development of the language. Around the turn of the thirteenth century, [[Layamon]] wrote his ''Brut'', based on Wace's twelfth century Anglo-Norman epic of the same name; Layamon's language is recognisably Middle English, though his prosody shows a strong Anglo-Saxon influence remaining. Other transitional works were preserved as popular entertainment, including a variety of [[romance (genre)|romances]] and [[Middle English Lyric|lyrics]]. With time, the English language regained prestige, and in 1362 it replaced French and Latin in [[Parliament]] and courts of law.
It was with the fourteenth century that major works of English literature began once again to appear; these include the so-called [[Pearl Poet]]'s ''[[Pearl (poem)|Pearl]]'', ''[[Patience (poem)|Patience]]'', ''[[Cleanness]]'', and ''[[Sir Gawain and the Green Knight]]''; [[William Langland|Langland]]'s political and religious allegory ''[[Piers Plowman]]''; [[John Gower|Gower]]'s ''Confessio Amantis''; and, of course, the works of [[Geoffrey Chaucer|Chaucer]], the most highly regarded English poet of the Middle Ages, who was seen by his contemporaries as a successor to the great tradition of [[Virgil]] and [[Dante Alighieri|Dante]].
The reputation of Chaucer's successors in the 15th century has suffered in comparison with him, though [[John Lydgate|Lydgate]] and [[John Skelton|Skelton]] are widely studied. However, the century really belongs to a group of remarkable [[Scotland|Scottish]] writers. The rise of Scottish poetry began with the writing of ''The Kingis Quair'' by [[James I of Scotland]]. The main poets of this Scottish group were [[Robert Henryson]], [[William Dunbar]] and [[Gavin Douglas]]. Henryson and Douglas introduced a note of almost savage satire, which may have owed something to the [[Scottish Gaelic language|Gaelic]] [[bard]]s, while Douglas' version of Virgil's ''Aeneid'' is one of the early monuments of Renaissance literary humanism in English.
==The Renaissance in England==
The [[Renaissance]] was slow in coming to England, with the generally accepted start date being around 1509. It is also generally accepted that the English Renaissance extended until the Restoration in 1660. However, a number of factors had prepared the way for the introduction of the new learning long before this start date. A number of medieval poets had, as already noted, shown an interest in the ideas of Aristotle and the writings of European Renaissance precursors such as Dante.
The introduction of [[movable-block printing]] by [[William Caxton|Caxton]] in 1474 provided the means for the more rapid dissemination of new or recently rediscovered writers and thinkers. Caxton also printed the works of Chaucer and Gower and these books helped establish the idea of a native poetic tradition that was linked to its European counterparts. In addition, the writings of English humanists like [[Thomas More]] and [[Thomas Elyot]] helped bring the ideas and attitudes associated with the new learning to an English audience.
Three other factors in the establishment of the English Renaissance were the [[Reformation]], Counter Reformation, and the opening of the era of English naval power and overseas exploration and expansion. The establishment of the [[Church of England]] in 1535 accelerated the process of questioning the Catholic world-view that had previously dominated intellectual and artistic life. At the same time, long-distance sea voyages helped provide the stimulus and information that underpinned a new understanding of the nature of the universe which resulted in the theories of [[Nicolaus Copernicus]] and [[Johannes Kepler]].
===Early Renaissance poetry===
With a small number of exceptions, the early years of the 16th century are not particularly notable. The Douglas ''Aeneid'' was completed in 1513 and [[John Skelton]] wrote poems that were transitional between the late Medieval and Renaissance styles. The new king, [[Henry VIII of England|Henry VIII]], was something of a poet himself. The most significant English poet of this period was [[Thomas Wyatt (poet)|Thomas Wyatt]], who was among the first poets to write [[sonnet]]s in English.
===The Elizabethans===
The [[Elizabethan]] period ([[1558 in poetry|1558]] to [[1603 in poetry|1603]]) in poetry is characterized by a number of frequently overlapping developments. The introduction and adaptation of themes, models and verse forms from other European traditions and classical literature, the Elizabethan song tradition, the emergence of a courtly poetry often centred around the figure of the monarch and the growth of a verse-based drama are among the most important of these developments.
====Elizabethan Song====
A wide range of Elizabethan poets wrote songs, including [[Nicholas Grimald]], [[Thomas Nashe]] and [[Robert Southwell]]. There are also a large number of extant anonymous songs from the period. Perhaps the greatest of all the songwriters was [[Thomas Campion]]. Campion is also notable because of his experiments with [[Meter (poetry)|metres]] based on counting syllables rather than stresses. These quantitative metres were based on classical models and should be viewed as part of the wider Renaissance revival of Greek and Roman artistic methods.
The songs were generally printed either in miscellanies or anthologies such as [[Richard Tottel]]'s 1557 ''Songs and Sonnets'' or in songbooks that included printed music to enable performance. These performances formed an integral part of both public and private entertainment. By the end of the 16th century, a new generation of composers, including [[John Dowland]], [[William Byrd]], [[Orlando Gibbons]], [[Thomas Weelkes]] and [[Thomas Morley]] were helping to bring the art of Elizabethan song to an extremely high musical level.
====Courtly poetry====
[[Image:EdmundSpenser.jpg|right|thumb|200px|Edmund Spenser]]
With the consolidation of Elizabeth's power, a genuine court sympathetic to poetry and the arts in general emerged. This encouraged the emergence of a poetry aimed at, and often set in, an idealised version of the courtly world.
Among the best known examples of this are [[Edmund Spenser]]'s ''[[The Faerie Queene]]'', which is effectively an extended hymn of praise to the queen, and [[Philip Sidney]]'s ''[[Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia|Arcadia]]''. This courtly trend can also be seen in Spenser's ''Shepheardes Calender''. This poem marks the introduction into an English context of the classical [[pastoral]], a mode of poetry that assumes an aristocratic audience with a certain kind of attitude to the land and peasants. The explorations of love found in the [[sonnet]]s of [[William Shakespeare]] and the poetry of [[Walter Raleigh]] and others also implies a courtly audience.
====Elizabethan verse drama====
Elizabethan verse drama is widely considered to be one of the major achievements of literature in English, and its most famous exponent, [[William Shakespeare]], is revered as the greatest poet in the language. This drama, which served both as courtly masque and popular entertainment, deals with all the major themes of contemporary literature and life.
There are plays on [[Europe]]an, [[classical antiquity|classical]], and [[religious]] themes reflecting the importance of humanism and the Reformation. There are also a number of plays dealing with [[English history]] that may be read as part of an effort to strengthen the British [[national myth]] and as artistic underpinnings for Elizabeth's resistance to the [[Spain|Spanish]] and other foreign threats. A number of the comic works for the stage also use bucolic themes connected with the [[pastoral]] genre.
In addition to Shakespeare, other notable dramatists of the period include [[Christopher Marlowe]], [[Thomas Middleton]], [[Thomas Dekker (poet)|Thomas Dekker]] and [[Ben Jonson]].
====Classicism====
Gavin Douglas' ''Aeneid'', Thomas Campion's metrical experiments, and Spenser's ''Shepheardes Calender'' and plays like Shakespeare's ''[[Antony and Cleopatra]]'' are all examples of the influence of classicism on Elizabethan poetry. It remained common for poets of the period to write on themes from [[classical mythology]]; Shakespeare's ''Venus and Adonis'' and the Christopher Marlowe/[[George Chapman]] ''Hero and Leander'' are examples of this kind of work.
Translations of classical poetry also became more widespread, with the versions of [[Ovid]]'s ''Metamorphoses'' by [[Arthur Golding]] (1565–7) and [[George Sandys]] (1626), and Chapman's translations of [[Homer]]'s ''Iliad'' (1611) and ''Odyssey'' (c.1615), among the outstanding examples.
===Jacobean and Caroline poetry===
English Renaissance poetry after the Elizabethan poetry can be seen as belonging to one of three strains; the [[Metaphysical poets]], the [[Cavalier poets]] and the school of Spenser. However, the boundaries between these three groups are not always clear and an individual poet could write in more than one manner.
====The Metaphysical poets====
[[Image:JohnDonne.jpg|right|thumb|200px|John Donne]]
The early 17th century saw the emergence of this group of poets who wrote in a witty, complicated style. The most famous of the [[Metaphysical poets|Metaphysicals]] is probably [[John Donne]]. Others include [[George Herbert]], [[Henry Vaughan]], [[Andrew Marvell]] and [[Richard Crashaw]]. [[John Milton]] in his ''Comus'' falls into this group. The Metaphysical poets went out of favour in the 18th century but began to be read again in the Victorian era. Donne's reputation was finally fully restored by the approbation of [[T. S. Eliot]] in the early 20th century.
====The Cavalier poets====
The [[Cavalier poet]]s wrote in a lighter, more elegant and artificial style than the Metaphysical poets. Leading members of the group include [[Ben Jonson]], [[Richard Lovelace]], [[Robert Herrick (poet)|Robert Herrick]], [[Edmund Waller]], [[Thomas Carew]] and [[John Denham (poet)|John Denham]]. The Cavalier poets can be seen as the forerunners of the major poets of the [[Augustan poetry|Augustan era]], who admired them greatly.
==The Restoration and 18th century==
It is perhaps ironic that ''Paradise Lost'', a story of fallen pride, was the first major poem to appear in England after the Restoration. The court of [[Charles II of England|Charles II]] had, in its years in [[France]], learned a worldliness and sophistication that marked it as distinctively different from the monarchies that preceded the Republic. Even if Charles had wanted to reassert the divine right of kingship, the Protestantism and taste for power of the intervening years would have rendered it impossible.
===Satire===
It is hardly surprising that the world of fashion and [[scepticism]] that emerged encouraged the art of [[satire]]. All the major poets of the period, [[Samuel Butler (1612-1680)|Samuel Butler]], [[John Dryden]], [[Alexander Pope]] and [[Samuel Johnson]], and the Irish poet [[Jonathan Swift]], wrote satirical verse. What is perhaps more surprising is that their satire was often written in defence of public order and the established church and government. However, writers such as Pope used their gift for satire to create scathing works responding to their detractors or to criticise what they saw as social atrocities perpetrated by the government. Pope's "The Dunciad" is a satirical slaying of two of his literary adversaries (Lewis Theobald, and Colley Cibber in a later version), expressing the view that British society was falling apart morally, culturally, and intellectually.
===18th century classicism===
The 18th century is sometimes called the [[Augustan poetry|Augustan]] age, and contemporary admiration for the classical world extended to the poetry of the time. Not only did the poets aim for a polished high style in emulation of the Roman ideal, they also translated and imitated Greek and [[Latin]] verse. Dryden translated all the known works of Virgil, and Pope produced versions of the two Homeric epics. [[Horace]] and [[Satires of Juvenal|Juvenal]] were also widely translated and imitated, Horace most famously by [[John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester]] and Juvenal by Samuel Johnson's ''Vanity of Human Wishes''.479
===Women poets in the 18th century===
[[Image:Aphra Behn by Mary Beale.jpg|thumb|right|200px|Aphra Behn]]
A number of women poets of note emerged during the period of the Restoration, including [[Aphra Behn]], [[Margaret Cavendish]], [[Lady Mary Chudleigh|Mary Chudleigh]], [[Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea|Anne Finch]], [[Anne Killigrew]], and [[Katherine Philips]]. Nevertheless, print publication by women poets was still relatively scarce when compared to that of men, though manuscript evidence indicates that many more women poets were practicing than was previously thought. Disapproval of feminine "forwardness," however, kept many out of print in the early part of the period, and even as the century progressed women authors still felt the need to justify their incursions into the public sphere by claiming economic necessity or the pressure of friends. Women writers were increasingly active in all genres throughout the eighteenth century, and by the 1790s women's poetry was flourishing. Notable poets later in the period include [[Anna Laetitia Barbauld]], [[Joanna Baillie]], [[Susanna Blamire]], [[Felicia Hemans]], [[Mary Leapor]], [[Lady Mary Wortley Montagu]], [[Hannah More]], and [[Mary Robinson (poet)|Mary Robinson]]. In the past decades there has been substantial scholarly and critical work done on women poets of the long eighteenth century: first, to reclaim them and make them available in contemporary editions in print or online, and second, to assess them and position them within a literary tradition.
===The late 18th century===
Towards the end of the 18th century, poetry began to move away from the strict Augustan ideals and a new emphasis on sentiment and the feelings of the poet. This trend can perhaps be most clearly seen in the handling of nature, with a move away from poems about formal gardens and landscapes by urban poets and towards poems about nature as lived in. The leading exponents of this new trend include [[Thomas Gray]], [[George Crabbe]], [[Christopher Smart]] and [[Robert Burns]] as well as the Irish poet [[Oliver Goldsmith]]. These poets can be seen as paving the way for the [[Romantic movement]].
==The Romantic movement==
[[Image:William Wordsworth - Project Gutenberg eText 12933.jpg|thumbnail|right|200px|William Wordsworth]]
The last quarter of the 18th century was a time of social and political turbulence, with revolutions in the [[United States]], [[France]], [[Ireland]] and elsewhere. In [[Kingdom of Great Britain|Great Britain]], movement for social change and a more inclusive sharing of power was also growing. This was the backdrop against which the Romantic movement in English poetry emerged.
The main poets of this movement were [[William Blake]], [[William Wordsworth]], [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]], [[Percy Bysshe Shelley]], [[Lord Byron]], and [[John Keats]]. The birth of English Romanticism is often dated to the publication in 1798 of Wordsworth and Coleridge's ''Lyrical Ballads''. However, Blake had been publishing since the early 1780s. However, much of the focus on Blake only came about during the last century when Northrop Frye discussed his work in his book "The Anatomy of Criticism."
In poetry, the [[Romanticism|Romantic]] movement emphasised the creative expression of the individual and the need to find and formulate new forms of expression. The Romantics, with the partial exception of Byron, rejected the poetic ideals of the eighteenth century, and each of them returned to Milton for inspiration, though each drew something different from Milton. They also put a good deal of stress on their own originality. To the Romantics, the moment of creation was the most important in poetic expression and could not be repeated once it passed. Because of this new emphasis, poems that were not complete were nonetheless included in a poet's body of work (such as Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" and "Christabel").
Additionally, the Romantic movement marked a shift in the use of language. Attempting to express the "language of the common man", Wordsworth and his fellow Romantic poets focused on employing poetic language for a wider audience, countering the mimetic, tightly constrained Neo-Classic poems (although it's important to note that the poet wrote first and foremost for his own creative, expression). In Shelley's "Defense of Poetry", he contends that poets are the "creators of language" and that the poet's job is to refresh language for their society.
The Romantics were not the only poets of note at this time. In the work of [[John Clare]] the late Augustan voice is blended with a peasant's first-hand knowledge to produce arguably some of the finest nature poetry in the English language. Another contemporary poet who does not fit into the Romantic group was [[Walter Savage Landor]]. Landor was a classicist whose poetry forms a link between the Augustans and [[Robert Browning]], who much admired it.
==Victorian poetry==
The [[Victorian era]] was a period of great political, social and economic change. The [[British Empire|Empire]] recovered from the loss of the [[American colonies]] and entered a period of rapid expansion. This expansion, combined with increasing industrialisation and mechanisation, led to a prolonged period of economic growth. The [[Reform Act 1832]] was the beginning of a process that would eventually lead to [[universal suffrage]].
===High Victorian poetry===
[[Image:ElizabethBarrettBrowning.jpg|thumb|200px|Elizabeth Barrett Browning]]
The major High Victorian poets were [[Alfred Tennyson|Alfred, Lord Tennyson]], [[Robert Browning]], [[Elizabeth Barrett Browning]], [[Matthew Arnold]] and [[Gerard Manley Hopkins]]. Tennyson was, to some degree, the Spenser of the new age and his ''Idylls of the Kings'' can be read as a Victorian version of ''The Faerie Queen'', that is as a poem that sets out to provide a mythic foundation to the idea of empire.
The Brownings spent much of their time out of England and explored European models and matter in much of their poetry. Robert Browning's great innovation was the [[dramatic poetry|dramatic monologue]], which he used to its full extent in his long novel in verse, ''The Ring and the Book''. Elizabeth Barrett Browning is perhaps best remembered for ''Sonnets from the Portuguese'' but her long poem ''Aurora Leigh'' is one of the classics of 19th century [[feminist]] literature.
Matthew Arnold was much influenced by Wordsworth, though his poem ''Dover Beach'' is often considered a precursor of the [[Modernist poetry|modernist]] revolution. Hopkins wrote in relative obscurity and his work was not published until after his death. His unusual style (involving what he called "sprung rhythm" and heavy reliance on rhyme and alliteration) had a considerable influence on many of the poets of the 1940s.
===Pre-Raphaelites, arts and crafts, Aestheticism, and the "Yellow" 1890s===
[[Image:rossetti selbst.jpg|thumb|200px|Dante Gabriel Rossetti: selfportrait]]
The [[Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood]] was a mid-19th century arts movement dedicated to the reform of what they considered the sloppy [[Mannerism|Mannerist]] painting of the day. Although primarily concerned with the visual arts, two members, the brother and sister [[Dante Gabriel Rossetti]] and [[Christina Rossetti]], were also poets of some ability. Their poetry shares many of the concerns of the painters; an interest in Medieval models, an almost obsessive attention to visual detail and an occasional tendency to lapse into whimsy.
Dante Rossetti worked with, and had some influence on, the leading [[Arts and crafts]] painter and poet [[William Morris]]. Morris shared the Pre-Raphaelite interest in the poetry of the European Middle Ages, to the point of producing some illuminated manuscript volumes of his work.
Towards the end of the century, English poets began to take an interest in French [[symbolism]] and Victorian poetry entered a decadent ''fin-de-siecle'' phase. Two groups of poets emerged, the ''[[Yellow Book]]'' poets who adhered to the tenets of [[Aestheticism]], including [[Algernon Charles Swinburne]], [[Oscar Wilde]] and [[Arthur Symons]] and the [[Rhymer's Club]] group that included [[Ernest Dowson]], [[Lionel Johnson]] and [[William Butler Yeats]].
===Comic verse===
Comic verse abounded in the Victorian era. Magazines such as ''[[Punch magazine]]'' and ''[[Fun (magazine)|Fun magazine]]'' teemed with humorous invention<ref>[http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23881 Spielmann, M. H. ''The History of "Punch"''], from [[Project Gutenberg]]</ref> and were aimed at a well-educated readership.<ref>Vann, J. Don. "Comic Periodicals," ''Victorian Periodicals & Victorian Society'' (Aldershot: Scholar Press, 1994)</ref> The most famous collection of Victorian comic verse is the [[Bab Ballads]].<ref>Stedman, Jane W. (1996). ''[[W. S. Gilbert]], A Classic Victorian & His Theatre'', pp. 26–29. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-816174-3</ref>
==The 20th century==
===The first three decades===
The Victorian era continued into the early years of the 20th century and two figures emerged as the leading representative of the poetry of the old era to act as a bridge into the new. These were [[W. B. Yeats|Yeats]] and [[Thomas Hardy]]. Yeats, although not a modernist, was to learn a lot from the new poetic movements that sprang up around him and adapted his writing to the new circumstances. Hardy was, in terms of technique at least, a more traditional figure and was to be a reference point for various anti-modernist reactions, especially from the 1950s onwards.
====The Georgian poets and World War I====
The [[Georgian poets]] were the first major grouping of the post-Victorian era. Their work appeared in a series of five anthologies called ''Georgian Poetry'' which were published by [[Harold Monro]] and edited by [[Edward Marsh]]. The poets featured included [[Edmund Blunden]], [[Rupert Brooke]], [[Robert Graves]], [[D. H. Lawrence]], [[Walter de la Mare]] and [[Siegfried Sassoon]]. Their poetry represented something of a reaction to the decadence of the 1890s and tended towards the sentimental.
Brooke and Sassoon were to go on to win reputations as war poets and Lawrence quickly distanced himself from the group and was associated with the modernist movement. Other notable poets who wrote about the [[World War I|war]] include [[Isaac Rosenberg]], [[Edward Thomas]], [[Wilfred Owen]], [[May Cannan]] and, from the home front, Hardy and [[Rudyard Kipling]]. Although many of these poets wrote socially-aware criticism of the war, most remained technically conservative and traditionalist.
====Modernism====
The early decades of the 20th century saw the [[United States]] begin to overtake the [[United Kingdom]] as the major economic power. In the world of poetry, this period also saw American writers at the forefront of ''avant-garde'' practices. Among the foremost of these poets were [[Gertrude Stein]], [[T. S. Eliot]], [[H.D.]] and [[Ezra Pound]], each of whom spent an important part of their writing lives in England, France and Italy.
Pound's involvement with the [[Imagist]]s marked the beginning of a revolution in the way poetry was written. English poets involved with this group included [[D. H. Lawrence]], [[Richard Aldington]], [[T. E. Hulme]], [[F. S. Flint]], [[E. E. Cummings]], [[Ford Madox Ford]], [[Allen Upward]] and [[John Cournos]]. Eliot, particularly after the publication of ''The Waste Land'', became a major figure and influence on other English poets.
In addition to these poets, other English modernists began to emerge. These included the London-Welsh poet and painter [[David Jones (poet)|David Jones]], whose first book, ''In Parenthesis'', was one of the very few experimental poems to come out of World War I, the Scot [[Hugh MacDiarmid]], [[Mina Loy]] and [[Basil Bunting]].
===The Thirties===
The poets who began to emerge in the 1930s had two things in common; they had all been born too late to have any real experience of the pre-[[World War I]] world and they grew up in a period of social, economic and political turmoil. Perhaps as a consequence of these facts, themes of community, social (in)justice and war seem to dominate the poetry of the decade.
The poetic landscape of the decade was dominated by four poets; [[W. H. Auden]], [[Stephen Spender]], [[Cecil Day-Lewis]] and [[Louis MacNeice]], although the last of these belongs at least as much to the history of Irish poetry. These poets were all, in their early days at least, politically active on the Left. Although they admired Eliot, they also represented a move away from the technical innovations of their modernist predecessors. A number of other, less enduring, poets also worked in the same vein. One of these was [[Michael Roberts]], whose ''New Country'' anthology both introduced the group to a wider audience and gave them their name.
The 1930s also saw the emergence of a home-grown English [[surrealist]] poetry whose main exponents were [[David Gascoyne]], [[Hugh Sykes Davies]], [[George Barker (poet)|George Barker]], and [[Philip O'Connor]]. These poets turned to French models rather than either the ''New Country'' poets or English-language modernism, and their work was to prove of importance to later English experimental poets as it broadened the scope of the English ''avant-garde'' tradition.
[[John Betjeman]] and [[Stevie Smith]], who were two of the most significant poets of this period, stood outside all schools and groups. Betjeman was a quietly ironic poet of Middle England with a fine command of a wide range of [[Verse (poetry)|verse]] techniques. Smith was an entirely unclassifiable one-off voice.
===The Forties===
The 1940s opened with the United Kingdom at war and a new generation of war poets emerged in response. These included [[Keith Douglas]], [[Alun Lewis]], [[Henry Reed]] and [[F. T. Prince]]. As with the poets of the First World War, the work of these writers can be seen as something of an interlude in the history of 20th century poetry. Technically, many of these war poets owed something to the 1930s poets, but their work grew out of the particular circumstances in which they found themselves living and fighting.
The main movement in post-war 1940s poetry was the New Romantic group that included [[Dylan Thomas]], [[George Barker (poet)|George Barker]], [[W. S. Graham]], [[Kathleen Raine]], [[Henry Treece]] and [[J. F. Hendry]]. These writers saw themselves as in revolt against the classicism of the ''New Country'' poets. They turned to such models as [[Gerard Manley Hopkins]], [[Arthur Rimbaud]] and [[Hart Crane]] and the word play of [[James Joyce]]. Thomas, in particular, helped [[Anglo-Welsh poetry]] to emerge as a recognisable force.
Other significant poets to emerge in the 1940s include [[Lawrence Durrell]], [[Bernard Spencer]], [[Roy Fuller]], [[Norman Nicholson]], [[Vernon Watkins]], [[R. S. Thomas]] and [[Norman McCaig]]. These last four poets represent a trend towards regionalism and poets writing about their native areas; Watkins and Thomas in [[Wales]], Nicholson in [[Cumberland, England|Cumberland]] and MacCaig in [[Scotland]].
===The Fifties===
The 1950s were dominated by three groups of poets, [[Movement (literature)|The Movement]], [[The Group]] and a number of poets that gathered around the label [[Extremist Art]].
The Movement poets as a group came to public notice in [[Robert Conquest]]'s [[1955 in poetry|1955]] anthology ''New Lines''. The core of the group consisted of [[Philip Larkin]], [[Elizabeth Jennings]], [[D. J. Enright]], [[Kingsley Amis]], [[Thom Gunn]] and [[Donald Davie]]. They were identified with a hostility to modernism and internationalism, and looked to Hardy as a model. However, both Davie and Gunn later moved away from this position.
As befits their name, [[The Group (literature)|the Group]] were much more formally a group of poets, meeting for weekly discussions under the chairmanship of [[Philip Hobsbaum]] and [[Edward Lucie-Smith]]. Other Group poets included [[Martin Bell]], [[Peter Porter (poet)|Peter Porter]], [[Peter Redgrove]], [[George MacBeth]] and [[David Wevill]]. Hobsbaum spent some time teaching in [[Belfast]], where he was a formative influence on the emerging Northern Ireland poets including [[Seamus Heaney]].
The term Extremist Art was first used by the poet [[A. Alvarez]] to describe the work of the American poet [[Sylvia Plath]]. Other poets associated with this group included Plath's one-time husband [[Ted Hughes]], [[Francis Berry]] and [[Jon Silkin]]. These poets are sometimes compared with the [[Expressionism|Expressionist]] German school.
A number of young poets working in what might be termed a modernist vein also started publishing during this decade. These included [[Charles Tomlinson]], [[Gael Turnbull]], [[Roy Fisher]] and [[Bob Cobbing]]. These poets can now be seen as forerunners of some of the major developments during the following two decades.
===The 1960s and 1970s===
In the early part of the 1960s, the centre of gravity of mainstream poetry moved to Ireland, with the emergence of [[Seamus Heaney]], [[Tom Paulin]], [[Paul Muldoon]] and others. In England, the most cohesive groupings can, in retrospect, be seen to cluster around what might loosely be called the modernist tradition and draw on American as well as indigenous models.
The [[British Poetry Revival]] was a wide-reaching collection of groupings and subgroupings that embraces [[performance poetry|performance]], [[sound poetry|sound]] and [[concrete poetry]] as well as the legacy of Pound, Jones, MacDiarmid, Loy and Bunting, the [[Objectivist poets]], [[the Beats]] and the [[Black Mountain poets]], among others. Leading poets associated with this movement include [[J. H. Prynne]], [[Eric Mottram]], [[Tom Raworth]], [[Denise Riley]] and [[Lee Harwood]].
The [[Liverpool poets|Mersey Beat poets]] were [[Adrian Henri]], [[Brian Patten]] and [[Roger McGough]]. Their work was a self-conscious attempt at creating an English equivalent to the Beats. Many of their poems were written in protest against the established social order and, particularly, the threat of nuclear war. Although not actually a Mersey Beat poet, [[Adrian Mitchell]] is often associated with the group in critical discussion. Contemporary poet [[Steve Turner (writer)|Steve Turner]] has also been compared with them.
==English poetry now==
The last three decades of the 20th century saw a number of short-lived poetic groupings such as the [[Martian poetry|Martian]]s, along with a general trend towards what has been termed 'Poeclectics'<ref>[http://www.multilingual-matters.net/nw/003/nw0030066.htm] Making Voices: Identity, Poeclectics and the Contemporary British Poet; ''New Writing'', The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing; Volume 3 (1); pp 66–77</ref>, namely an intensification within individual poets' oeuvres of "all kinds of style, subject, voice, register and form". There was also a growth in interest in women's writing and in poetry from England's ethnic groupings, especially the West Indian community. Poets who emerged include [[Carol Ann Duffy]], [[Andrew Motion]], [[Craig Raine]], [[Wendy Cope]], [[James Fenton]], [[Blake Morrison]], [[Liz Lochhead]], [[Linton Kwesi Johnson]] and [[Benjamin Zephaniah]]. Combined with this was a growth in performance poetry fuelled by the [[Poetry Slam]] movement.
A new generation of innovative poets has also sprung up in the wake of the Revival grouping. Further activity focussed around poets in Bloodaxe Books [[The New Poetry]] including [[Simon Armitage]], [[Kathleen Jamie]], [[Glyn Maxwell]], [[Selima Hill]], [[Maggie Hannan]], and [[Michael Hofmann]]. The [[New Generation]] movement flowered in the 1990s and early twenty first century producing poets such as [[Don Paterson]], [[Julia Copus]], [[John Stammers]], [[Jacob Polley]], [[David Morley]] and [[Alice Oswald]]. There has been, too, a remarkable upsurge in independent and experimental poetry pamphlet publishers such as Flarestack, Heaventree and [[Perdika Press]]. Throughout this period, and to the present, independent poetry presses such as Enitharmon have continued to promote original work from (among others) [[Dannie Abse]], [[Martyn Crucefix]], [[Jane Duran]] and [[Mario Petrucci]].
==Notes==
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==References==
'''Print'''
*Hamilton, Ian. ''The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English''
'''Online'''
*[http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/display_rpo/timeline.cfm A Time-line of English poetry]
==See also==
*[[English literature]]
*[[List of national poetries]]
*[[Indian English literature#Poetry|Indian Poetry in English]]
*[[Poets' Corner]]
*[[New Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1950|New Oxford Book of English Verse 1250–1950]]
==External links==
*[http://www.hungamaboards.com/forumdisplay.php?f=56 English Poetry Collection Forums]
*[http://www.poetseers.org/the_great_poets/english_poets/ English Poets ]- Poems and biographies of English poets.
*[http://www.poetryresource.org/ Poetry Resource] a website for students of poetry
*[http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/poetry/outloud/index.shtml Poets perform their own work]
*[http://www.perdikapress.com/ Perdika Editions] Experimental/ Modernist/ Poetry in Translation
*[http://www.mario.everdense.com/makingvoices.pdf Contemporary British Poetry: Poeclectics]
{{Poetry of different cultures and languages}}
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[[Category:Poetry by nation or language]]
[[Category:History of literature in the United Kingdom]]
[[es:Poesía de Inglaterra]]