THE MOVEMENT AND THE GROUP
SIR,—The correspondence on 'the Movement and the Group' reflects the little cold war that has been going on for some time between the romantics who like to travel solo and the cool donnish cabals who meet in Chelsea. The triple salvo from Messrs. Hill, Robson and Potts was welcome (cut-and-thrust debate on even the lower branches of literature is always good). But one should be aware of a sliver of hypocrisy creeping in here. There are other poetic cliques operating in the metropolis.
The three eager beavers mentioned above, plus myself and others, are in a very loose grouping based on the weekly Tribune. The nearest we ever come to a seminar is in the occasional reading sponsored by that journal, which is too wide open to the eccentric fringe to have as much value as it could have. Otherwise, we gather in the saloon- bar or at an off-beat party, and although the in- evitable waspish remarks are made about people, no direct hatchet-work is done on their poetry. On the whole, they are an extremely tolerant crowd who go their own ways, honestly shying away from too-stifling 'in-groups.' But still, we do, whether we accept it or not, form some kind of faction— the very thing we condemn in others.
Mr. Hill and Mr. Robson are also linked with Dannie Abse, Adrian Mitchell and Thomas Blackburn in the odd world of 'Poetry and Jazz.' This is just another unofficial network in which you take care of your friends, and, possessing as they do their admirable 'maverick' view of poetry, they naturally tend to close their ranks against the gentlemen from the hothouse 'creative seminars.'
Mr. Hobsbaum and Mr. Lucie-Smith, and those on the other wing, have in their hands the small but supreme weapon of language, and some of them wield it pretty expertly. Presumably, if they are poets, they are also equipped with insight and perception and a certain degree of tolerance, and should be able to rise above the mere indulgence in bitchy tirades. They are all really brothers under, the skin of ephemeral poetic theory.
JOHN TRIPP
8 Howley Place, W2
Previous page
