The British Poetry Revival is the name now used to describe a group of poets in the United Kingdom during the late 1960s and 1970s. The term "British Poetry Revival" was first used in 1964 to introduce the idea of a new style of British poetry, similar to an anthology called The New American Poetry (1960), which was edited by Donald Allen.

The Revival was a response inspired by modernist ideas, opposing the more traditional approach of a group called the Movement. The poets involved included older writers such as Bob Cobbing, Paula Claire, Tom Raworth, Eric Mottram, Jeff Nuttall, the Finnish poet Anselm Hollo, Andrew Crozier, the Canadian poet Lionel Kearns, Lee Harwood, Allen Fisher, Iain Sinclair, and younger writers like Paul Buck, Bill Griffiths, John Hall, John James, Gilbert Adair, Lawrence Upton, Peter Finch, Ulli Freer, Ken Edwards, Robert Gavin Hampson, Gavin Selerie, Frances Presley, Elaine Randell, Robert Sheppard, Paul Evans, Adrian Clarke, Clive Fencott, Maggie O'Sullivan, Cris Cheek, Tony Lopez, and Denise Riley.

Beginnings

Poets connected to the British Poetry Revival often looked to modernist examples, such as American poets Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and Charles Olson, as well as British poets like David Jones, Basil Bunting, and Hugh MacDiarmid. By the early 1960s, younger poets began exploring new poetic ideas inspired by these earlier writers. These poets included Roy Fisher, Gael Turnbull, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Bob Cobbing, Jeff Nuttall, Tom Raworth, Michael Horovitz, Eric Mottram, Peter Finch, Edwin Morgan, Jim Burns, Elaine Feinstein, Lee Harwood, and Christopher Logue.

Many of these poets joined Allen Ginsberg and an audience of 7,000 people at the Albert Hall International Poetry Incarnation on June 11, 1965, an event often described as the first British happening. Earlier British happenings included John Latham’s event-based art and Skoob Tower ceremonies, Gustav Metzger’s 1964 auto-destructive art, Adrian Henri’s 1962 collage-events in Liverpool’s The Cavern Club, and Jeff Nuttall’s events in Better Books. These events were influenced by Dada performances at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich at the start of the 20th century.

Roy Fisher, a professional jazz pianist, used ideas from William Carlos Williams’s poem Paterson to write his long poem City about Birmingham. Gael Turnbull, who lived in the United States, was also influenced by Williams. Edwin Morgan and Ian Hamilton Finlay, both from Scotland, created work using found text, sound, and visual poetry. Eric Mottram, Jeff Nuttall, Michael Horovitz, and Jim Burns were closely linked to the Beat generation writers. Eric Mottram and Tom Raworth were influenced by the Black Mountain poets, while Tom Raworth and Lee Harwood were interested in the poets of the New York School.

Publishing outlets for this new experimental poetry included Turnbull’s Migrant Press, Raworth’s Matrix Press and Goliard Press, Horovitz’s New Departures, Stuart Montgomery’s Fulcrum Press, Tim Longville’s Grosseteste Review, Galloping Dog Press and its Poetry Information magazine, Pig Press, Andrew Crozier and Peter Riley’s The English Intelligencer, Crozier’s Ferry Press, and Cobbing’s Writers Forum. Many of these presses and magazines also published avant-garde poetry from American and European writers. The first major collection of poetry from this movement was Horovitz’s Children of Albion: Poetry of the Underground in Britain (1969). A broader overview of the first and second generations of the Revival is found in sections edited by Eric Mottram and Ken Edwards in The New British Poetry (1988). Robert Sheppard also discusses this period in his chapter “The British Poetry Revival” in The Poetry of Saying (Liverpool University Press, 2005). Juha Virtanen wrote a detailed study titled Poetry and Performance During the British Poetry Revival 1960–1980 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).

England

Thanks to Cobbing's Writers Forum and its writers' workshop, London became a center for many young poets, including Bill Griffiths, Paula Claire, Allen Fisher, Iain Sinclair, Gilbert Adair, Lawrence Upton, Peter Finch, Ulli Freer, Gavin Selerie, Frances Presley, Elaine Randell, Robert Sheppard, Adrian Clarke, Clive Fencott, Maggie O'Sullivan, cris cheek, Tony Lopez, and Denise Riley. Some details about this time are found in CLASP: late modernist poetry in London (Shearsman, 2016), edited by Robert Hampson and Ken Edwards, and in Ken Edwards's memoir, Wild Metrics.

Bill Griffiths writes poetry that is bright and eye-catching but also shows strong political beliefs. His work includes his professional knowledge of Anglo-Saxon history and his time as a member of the Hells Angels. Both Iain Sinclair and Allen Fisher share an interest in the work of William Blake and the meaning of places, especially London. This can be seen in Sinclair's books Suicide Bridge and Lud Heat and Fisher's series of books called Place. Maggie O'Sullivan's work explores the idea of the poet as a shaman, while Elaine Randell and Denise Riley were among the first British women poets to mix feminist ideas with experimental poetry. For more about Griffiths's work, see Bill Griffiths edited by William Rowe (Salt, 2007). For more about Sinclair, see Iain Sinclair by Robert Sheppard (Northcote House, 2007) or Iain Sinclair by Brian Baker (Manchester UP, 2007). For Fisher, see The Allen Fisher Companion edited by Robert Hampson and cris cheek (Shearsman, 2020).

Bill Griffiths started Pirate Press to publish his own work and the work of others. Allen Fisher created Spanner for similar reasons, and Iain Sinclair's early books were published by his own Albion Village Press, which also published work by Chris Torrance and Brian Catling. Making books has always been an important part of the Revival movement. Many of these writers also took part in performance poetry events, both alone and in groups like Cobbing's Bird Yak and Konkrete Canticle.

Eric Mottram was an important figure in London. He knew about the Beat generation writers and other American poets linked to the New American Poetry. He also helped promote poetry and write his own work. Because of Mottram's influence, King's College London became another important place for the British Poetry Revival. Poets who studied or worked there included Gilbert Adair, Peter Barry, Sean Bonney, Hannah Bramness, Clive Bush, Ken Edwards, Bill Griffiths, Robert Gavin Hampson, Jeff Hilson, Will Rowe, and Lawrence Upton.

By the early 1950s, Basil Bunting moved back to live in Newcastle. In 1966, Fulcrum Press published his book Briggflatts, which is widely considered his best work. A group of younger poets began to gather around Bunting. In 1963, Connie and Tom Pickard started a reading series and bookshop called the Morden Tower Book Room. The first event featured readings by Bunting and Allen Ginsberg. Robert Creeley, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gregory Corso, and Canadian poets Gerry Gilbert and Lionel Kearns also read there. Soon, other poets like Richard Caddel, Barry MacSweeney, and Colin Simms joined. For more about this time, see essays by Connie Pickard, Tony Baker, and Tom Pickard in CUSP: recollections of poetry in transition edited by Geraldine Monk (Shearsman, 2012).

Through Bunting, these younger writers learned about the work of the Objectivist poets, including Louis Zukofsky and Lorine Niedecker. These poets influenced Caddel and Simms in their writing about the Northumbrian environment, while John Seed was influenced by George Oppen. Connie Pickard and Barry MacSweeney shared Bunting's interest in reviving Northumbrian vowel sounds and musical qualities in poetry. All of these poets were inspired by Bunting's belief that poetry should be heard as speech, not just read as text.

In 1967, Barry MacSweeney organized the Sparty Lea Poetry Festival. This event lasted ten days and included readings, writing, and discussions. Poets like the Pickards, MacSweeney, Andrew Crozier, John James, John Temple, Pete Armstrong, Tim Longville, Peter Riley, John Hall, J. H. Prynne, and Nick Waite stayed in four cottages in the village of Sparty Lea. This event is often seen as a key moment in the British Poetry Revival, bringing together poets from different areas and encouraging them to support each other's work.

Although published by Writers Forum and Pirate Press, Geraldine Monk is a poet from the North of England. Like Maggie O'Sullivan, she writes for performance as well as for the page, and her work includes themes of feminism. Other poets from the North of England include Paul Buck, Glenda George, and John Seed. Paul Buck and Glenda George edited Curtains, a magazine that shared contemporary French poetry and philosophical writing. John Seed was influenced by Objectivism while living in the North-East. Geraldine Monk's collection CUSP, which includes memories from Northern poets like Jim Burns, Paul Buck, Glenda George, and John Seed, offers a detailed look at innovative poetry outside major cities.

The Cambridge poets were a group centered around J. H. Prynne and included Andrew Crozier, John James, Douglas Oliver, Veronica Forrest-Thomson, Peter Riley, Tim Longville, and John Riley. Prynne was influenced by Charles Olson, and Andrew Crozier helped Carl Rakosi return to writing poetry in the 1960s. The New York school also influenced many Cambridge poets, especially John James. The Grosseteste Review, which published these poets, was originally seen as a British version of Objectivist poetry. The early development of this group is found in The English Intelligencer, a privately circulated publication from January 1966 to April 1968. It was founded by Andrew Crozier, who edited the first and third series, and Peter Riley edited the second series. Contributors and readers included Peter Armstrong, Jim Burns, Elaine Feinstein, John Hall, John James, Tim Longville, Barry MacSweeney, J. H. Prynne, Tom Raworth, John Temple, Chris Torrance, and Nick Wayte.

In general, the

Wales and Scotland

In the 1960s and early 1970s, Peter Finch, who worked with Bob Cobbing, organized poetry readings called No Walls Poetry and published an innovative magazine named second aeon. In 1974, he started a bookstore called Oriel Books in Cardiff. This shop became an important place for young Welsh poets to gather. However, some experimental poets in Wales were not originally from Wales. Two important poets who lived outside Wales but worked in Wales were John Freeman and Chris Torrance. Freeman was influenced by a group of poets called the Objectivists. He wrote about George Oppen and Marianne Niedecker. In 1985, he edited a book titled Not Comforts / but Visions, which included essays about George Oppen’s poetry. Other writers in this book included John Seed, Jeremy Hooker, and others. Torrance has said he was inspired by David Jones. His long poem series called Magic Door is widely considered one of the most important works from the poetry revival. For more information about this time, readers can look at the memories shared by Chris Torrance and Peter Finch in CUSP: recollections of poetry in transition (Shearsman, 2012).

In Scotland, Edwin Morgan, Ian Hamilton Finlay, and Tom Leonard became important poets during this time. They were interested in forms of poetry that used sound and visual elements. A place called the Third Eye Centre in Glasgow (later renamed the Centre for Contemporary Arts) helped support experimental poetry through its gallery, performance space, and bookstore. Magazines such as Scottish International, Chapman, and Akros connected modernist traditions from the early and mid-20th century with new poets. These magazines often mixed experimental work with more traditional styles.

Between 1972 and 1974, John Schofield, who was a graduate student at the time, organized three annual poetry festivals at Edinburgh University. These events were called POEM 72, POEM 73, and POEM 74. At the first festival, poets such as Edwin Morgan, Norman MacCaig, Tom Buchan, Robert Garioch, and Liz Lochhead read their work. About 700 people attended. At POEM 73, more than 1,300 people came to hear poets like Hugh MacDiarmid, George MacBeth, Adrian Mitchell, Jon Silkin, and Iain Crichton Smith. The final festival, POEM 74, featured readings by Adrian Henri, Libby Houston, Jeff Nuttall, Rose McGuire, Frances Horovitz, Ruth Fainlight, and Sorley Maclean.

"A treacherous assault on British poetry"

In 1971, many poets connected to the British Poetry Revival joined the Poetry Society, which had not been active for a long time. After elections, these poets formed the new council of the society. The society had previously opposed modernist poetry, but under the new council, this position changed. Eric Mottram became the editor of the society’s magazine, Poetry Review. Over the next six years, he edited twenty issues that included most of the key poets from the Revival. The magazine also listed books and magazines published by small presses that had started to support these poets.

During this time, Nuttall and MacSweeney were chairpersons of the society. Bob Cobbing used the society’s basement photocopying equipment to create books for the Writers Forum. Around this time, Cobbing, Finch, and others founded the Association of Little Presses (ALP) to help small press publishers and organize book fairs where they could sell their work.

In the late 1970s, Mottram was removed as editor of Poetry Review after the magazine featured many "foreign poets." The Arts Council criticized Mottram’s editorial choices as "a treacherous assault on British poetry," as Mottram wrote in his introduction to The New British Poetry, a collection that described the wide range of poetic activity during this time. Peter Barry’s book Poetry Wars: British Poetry in the 1970s and the Battle of Earls Court (Salt, 2006) provides a detailed account of events using archives and historical records. James Sutherland Smith offered a different perspective, comparing the Poetry Society’s brief takeover to an attempt by the Militant Tendency to take over the Rotary Club, highlighting political and class issues.

At the same time, the Arts Council launched an investigation that overturned the results of the Poetry Society’s elections, which had again brought in a council supportive of the Poetry Revival. This led many members to stop participating in the society. Robert Sheppard later criticized Barry’s account and the actions of the committee members, noting that younger poets, who had grown up through Cobbing’s Writers Forum workshops, felt the boycott was a mistake. These poets created work that was more similar to the LANGUAGE poets than to the New American Poetry.

The 1980s and after

Many young poets who first published in Poetry Review under Mottram became known in the late 1970s. In London, poets such as Bill Griffiths, Ulli Freer, cris cheek, Lawrence Upton, Robert Gavin Hampson, Robert Sheppard, and Ken Edwards were prominent during this time. These poets, along with others, met regularly at Gilbert Adair's Subvoicive reading series, which also included poets from North America and visiting poets like Caroline Bergvall, Paul Buck, Andrew Duncan, D. S. Marriott, Maggie O'Sullivan, and Denise Riley. Ken Edwards started a magazine called Reality Studios, which was based on Alembic, a poetry magazine he co-edited in the 1970s with Peter Barry and Robert Hampson. Through Reality Studios, Edwards introduced British readers to L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets. He also co-founded Reality Street Editions with Wendy Mulford, a publisher that remained important for contemporary poetry until 2018 and helped connect US and UK poets. The London-based Angel Exhaust magazine brought together younger poets, including Adrian Clarke, Robert Sheppard, and Andrew Duncan. In the Midlands, Tony Baker's Figs magazine focused on Objectivist and Bunting-inspired poetry from the Northumbrian school while also featuring new poets.

In 1988, an anthology called The New British Poetry was published. It included a section on Revival poets edited by Mottram and another on younger poets edited by Edwards. In 1987, Crozier and Longville published A Various Art, which focused mainly on Cambridge poets. Iain Sinclair edited another anthology of Revival-related work called Conductors of Chaos in 1996. For more information about the work of these poets, see The New British poetries: the scope of the possible (Manchester University Press, 1993), edited by Robert Hampson and Peter Barry. In 1994, W. N. Herbert and Richard Price co-edited an anthology of Scottish Informationist poetry called Contraflow on the SuperHighway (Gairfish and Southfields Press).

The anthology Conductors of Chaos also highlighted the revival of British modernist poets from the generation after Bunting. Poets such as David Gascoyne, selected by Jeremy Reed; W. S. Graham, selected by Tony Lopez; David Jones, selected by Drew Milne; J.F. Hendry, selected by Andrew Crozier; and Nicholas Moore, selected by Peter Riley, were re-evaluated and recognized for their contributions to 20th-century British poetry. Richard Caddel created the British and Irish poetry discussion list, which provided an international forum for sharing news and ideas about experimental poetry for many years. Revival poetry was also widely published in the United States. Caddel and Peter Middleton edited a special issue of Talisman (1996) featuring new UK poetry for US readers. With Peter Quartermain, Caddel also edited Other: British and Irish Poetry since 1970 (USA, 1999). Keith Tuma's Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry (Oxford University Press, USA, 2001) included Revival poetry in a broader overview of the century's literary history.

In the 1990s and later, poets like Johan de Wit, Sean Bonney, Jeff Hilson, and Piers Hugill became known after participating in the Cobbing-led Writers Forum workshop. A related workshop, Foro De Escritores in Santiago, Chile, influenced poets such as Martin Gubbins, Andreas Aandwandter, and Martin Bakero. Poets associated with Barque Press, such as Andrea Brady and Keston Sutherland, and later Bad Press, including Marianne Morris and Jow Lindsay, also made significant contributions through the Cambridge poetry scene. Perdika Press in North London helped promote contemporary Modernist writers like Nicholas Potamitis, Mario Petrucci, Robert Vas Dias, and Peter Brennan. The press also published Bill Berkson's first work in Britain. From Scotland, Peter Manson, Drew Milne, David Kinloch, and Richard Price (who previously edited Verse and Southfields) became more prominent as poets. New works emerged through the involvement of cris cheek, Bridgid Mcleer, and Alaric Sumner, guided by Caroline Bergvall and John Hall through the Performance Writing programme at Dartington College of Arts, which included Kirsten Lavers, Andy Smith, and Chris Paul. Redell Olsen's MA in Poetic Practice at Royal Holloway, University of London, produced writers such as Becky Cremin, Frances Kruk, Ryan Ormond, Sophie Robinson, John Sparrow, and Stephen Willey. Keith Jebb's Creative Writing programme at the University of Bedfordshire included Alyson Torns and Allison Boast.