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The Group was an informal group of poets who met in London from the mid 1950s to the mid 1960s. As...

The Group was an informal group of poets who met in London from the mid 1950s to the mid 1960s. As a poetic movement in Great Britain it is often seen as a being the successor to The Movement. In November 1952 while at Downing 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 newspaper Varsity for people interested in forming a poetry discussion group. Five others, including Peter 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 as The Group. The London meetings started in 1955 once a week, on Friday evenings, at first at Hobsbaum's flat and later at the house of Edward 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 tutor F. R. Leavis and of the New Criticism in general. Before each meeting about six or seven