The Group: An Experiment in Criticism

Abstract

The Group was a collection of writers, based in London, and predominantly poets, who met each week between 1955 and 1965 to discuss one another's work. For the first four years I acted as chairman, selecting participants and making sure that they received in advance of each meeting a copy of the texts to be discussed. There was no membership fee and no automatic right of admission. There were no passengers, either: it was understood that, sooner or later, every participant in discussion would contribute work that, in its turn, would be discussed. The Group was not original to London but derived from a prototype in Cambridge. Two members of my college (Downing), Tony Davis and Neil Morris, had a notion to improve the standard of verse-speaking at the university. They advertised in Varsity, the undergraduate newspaper, and received inquiries from Selwyn College (Roy Hazell, now a theology don at Oxford), Christ's (Ben Driver and David Jones, the latter now a distinguished stage and television director), and Queens' (Rodney Banister and Peter Redgrove, the latter, of course, the well-known poet). These five, together with the two originators and myself, held our first meeting in Neil Morris's room at Downing College towards the end of November 1952. This Group soon moved from a concern with verse-speaking to the active production of creative work. I may have sparked the process off at this first meeting by reading out and commenting upon a poem of Thom Gunn's called 'Carnal Knowledge'. The poem had just appeared in Granta, a Cambridge magazine of the arts, and had attracted some attention. The text I read at that meeting differed considerably from the one promulgated since and seemed to me a callow piece of posturing. My view was disputed, especially by Banister and Redgrove. It turned out that they intended to start a literary magazine which would include verse by Thom Gunn and others of the then undergraduate intelligentsia. As started, the magazine upheld the values of the local Establishment, but, when Redgrove took over as sole editor, Delta (as it was called) began to represent something of an alternative route. It influenced, and was influenced by, the Cambridge Group. As this Group continued it became increasingly a forum for young writers. A surprising number of these developed as academics. David Ward, who was to write books about T. S. Eliot and Swift, eventually became Senior Lecturer at the University of Dundee; Richard Drain, whose doctoral thesis