Estrangement and the Retro-Modernists

Abstract

The publication of the Bloodaxe anthology The New Poetry¹ and the recent promotion of “New Generation” poets are symptoms of the emphasis in the poetry world on youth and the desire for novelty. This reinforces a tendency which too readily canonises some poets at the expense of others and then passes on, so that these others, no matter how substantial their achievement, are marginalised. The main contention of the second part of this book is that a number of poets, more or less contemporary with Philip Larkin, have suffered from the way he — and the Movement poetic with which he was associated — dominated the British poetry world in the 50s and 60s and that it is time their achievement should be recognised.