Geoffrey Hill, the Holocaust, and the Redemption of British Poetry

Abstract

Among the most important British poets of the later twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Geoffrey Hill often received strong criticism due to the allegedly reactionary themes and ideas in his poetry. While he demonstrates a pronounced love of British culture, Hill’s patriotism is complemented by an attentive witness to the Holocaust and the trauma of World War II. Balancing his supposed nationalism with his Holocaust poetry, we see in Hill a generous and humbly patriotic British national poet.