20th Century British Poetry20th Century British Poetry Erika Schrickel

Poetry Movements

• There were 13 movements during the 20th century that were shared among:

• the United States,

• Great Britain,

• Hungary and other countries;

• however, only six of them stemmed from Great Britain.

Poetry Movements

Modernist Poetry

Imagist

Objectivist

The Movement

British Poetry Revival

The Martians

Modernist Poetry

• reaction of the Victorian movement, emphasizing traditional formalism and fancy diction.

• influenced by Greek, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, and Spanish poets.

Imagism

• Early 20th-century British and American poetry

• Favored precision of imagery and clear, sharp language.

• Rejected the digressive and sentimental qualities of the Romantic poetry era.

Objectivist

• derived from the Modernists

• mainly of Americans excluding british poet Basil Bunting

• treated poetry like it was an object

• emphasized sincerity, intelligence, and the poet's clear perspective of the world.

The Movement

• English poets Kinsley Amis, Philip Larkin, Donald Alfred Davie, D.J. Enright, John Wain, Elizabeth Jennings and Robert Conquest.

• Theme: anti-romance.

British Poetry Revival

• 1960s and 1970s

• Modernist-inspired reaction to the poetry movement,

The Martians

• British surrealist poets

• described ordinary things as if they saw it through the eyes of a Martian.

• Describing a book:

• “Mechanical birds with many wingsperch on the handcause the eyes to meltor the body to shriek without pain” -Raine

D. J. Enright

Dennis Joseph Enright

March 11, 1920 - December 31, 2002

British Academic, Poet, Novelist

Basil Bunting

March 1 1900 - April 17 1985

British Modernist Poet

Emphasized sound in poetry

Famous for “Briggflatts”

Basil Bunting’s “At Briggflatts Meetinghouse”

Boasts time mocks cumber Rome. Wrenset up his own monument.Others watch fells dwindle, thinkthe sun’s fires sink.

Stones indeed sift to sand, oakblends with saint’s bones.Yet for a little longer herestone and oak shelter

silence while we ask nothingbut silence. Look how clouds dance under the wind’s wing, and leaves delight in transience.