Contemporary Poetry

CONTEMPORARY POETRY
Larkin and the movement

The poetry of the Movement (1950s) represented a further move away from Modernism. The
Movement poets, the most representative of whom was Philip Larkin wrote in a rational,
comprehensible way and used traditional verse forms and meters. Larkin’s poems captured the
years of austerity and despair which came after the World War II in their depiction of everyday life
in sad urban and suburban environments. This poetry was typically personal, insular, apolitical and
anti-intellectual. His poems dealt with the material problems of existence: money, sex, failing
health, growing old and dying. For these problems, Larkin felt, there were no adequate spiritual or
intellectual solutions. Formally speaking, Larkin has had a major influence on the work of many of
the younger contemporary poets who emerged during the 80s.
Ted Hughes
He is most famous for his animal poems, which show the influence of D. H. Lawrence. Through his
portraits of different animals he explores the paradoxes of the natural world which is characterized
by a combination of life-affirming vitality and cruelty. Hughes is thus a poet of nature in its most
savage and pure state, though his works also draws on mythological sources.
Women poets
Most of the significant women poets of the 20th century have not been British. Sylvia Plath, the
American wife of Ted Hughes, is perhaps the most widely known woman poet of this century. Her
poems combine precise imagery with incredible emotional intensity and describe her own mental
breakdown, linking it to the chaos of the modern world. She began a style of confessional female
poetry which had a great influence on the women poets who came after her. These range from the
Canadian Margaret Atwood to the British Carol Ann Duffy.
Less widely known than Plath but certainly of equal importance is Elizabeth Bishop who produced
poetry of great complexity and intellectual concentration. Central among her concerns are physical
and emotional displacement and the difficulties of knowing and imposing order upon reality. She
also took poetic discourse beyond its traditional borders often using prose and mixed techniques,
which have led her to be considered as postmodern.
Seamus Heaney and Irish poetry
Seamus Heaney was much influenced by Hughes, particularly by the way his poems combined
acute observation of nature with mythology and by his dense and highly imitative language. His
own poems are a fusion of myth, personal reminiscence and contemporary Irish history and
concentrate on exploring the problems in Northern Ireland in terms of their cultural and historical
roots. In this respect he is also influenced by Yeats.
The Beat Generation
The 50s saw the emergence of a group of American writers who were later labeled the Beat
Generation. Jack Kerouac, whose cult novel On the Road, was published in 1957, became the
spokesman of the movement. As well as literary figures, the beats son became living symbols of
rebellion and unconventional lifestyles. Through their experimental writing techniques influenced
by the pre-war avant-garde and by the rhythms of jazz, they launched an assault on the puritanical
conservatism of post-war America, embracing eastern philosophies and religions, such as Buddhism
and Hinduism and ancient cults. The most influential poet of the group was Allen Ginsberg, whose
poems form an exhaustive catalogue of the wonders and horrors of the post-war world.
Post-colonial poets
In contemporary times the range of poetic expression has broadened to include pots from Britain’s
former colonies. Just as Britain has lost his status as a world political power so too has it lost its
linguistic authority. It is symptomatic that many of the mayor voices of the second half of the 20 th
century have been American. Poetry has always explored and expanded the limits of language so it
seems natural that this is best done by people who come from a different cultural and linguistic
tradition yet who write in English. To find the mayor poets in English of our times we must look to
the West Indies of Derek Walcott or the Nigerian poet and dramatist Wole Soyinka
The inheritors of Modernism

One significant development of poetry in recent years has been its desire to make itself readable for
a wider audience, which has led to a refusal of modernist-type difficulty on the part of many
younger poets. However the modernist flame has been revived by a group of poets including Ian
Sinclair, Brian Catling and Barry MacSweeney whose work is extremely challenging and which
returns to the use and creation of hermetic symbolic systems.

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CONTEMPORARY POETRY

Larkin and the movement

The inheritors of Modernism

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