Children of Albion: Poetry of the Underground in Britain
Encyclopedia
Children of Albion: Poetry of the Underground in Britain, an anthology of poetry
, was edited by Michael Horovitz
and published by Penguin Books
in 1969 (see 1969 in poetry
). According to Martin Booth
it was "virtually a manifesto of New Departures doctrine and dogma".
Its appearance was a key step in the emergence to some kind of public attention of many of the poets associated with the British Poetry Revival
, many of whom were included. It was perhaps the classic 'hippie
' collection of British poetry
, with its self-conscious invocation of William Blake
and performance poets
. It has also been subject to much criticism, qua anthology of its time, both for its inclusions and exclusions.
, work by 63 poets in alphabetical order of surname, an essay, 'Afterwords' by the editor, and 'further reading' and 'acknowledgements' sections. The front cover features a detail from Glad Day, an engraving by Blake.
's anthology The New Poetry
. This marked the beginnings of a backlash against what Alvarez labelled the 'gentility' of the Movement poets. Alvarez's favoured alternative were poets like Sylvia Plath
and Ted Hughes
and others who connected with American
confessional poets like Robert Lowell
and John Berryman
.
Meanwhile, Donald Allen
's 1960 anthology, The New American Poetry 1945-1960
introduced British and other readers to a whole range of work other than the confessionals. Allen included work by the Beat generation
, the Black Mountain
, New York School
and Deep image
poets and others from outside the mainstream.
As British 1960s counterculture developed (see Swinging London
), the influence of these poets became more widespread, and many of the younger British poets began to experiment with local variants of the new poetics. Publishing outlets for the new poetry started to emerge, including Raworth's Matrix Press, and Goliard Press (which he ran with Barry Hall
) and Horovitz's own New Departures magazine and press.
Contacts between poets on both sides of the Atlantic developed, culminating in the International Poetry Incarnation
at the Royal Albert Hall
on June 11, 1965, which featured readings by a range of British poets, as well as Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti
and others to an audience of 7,000 people. Horovitz was the main organizer of this event and this Afterwords essay makes it clear that the success of the Albert Hall happening
was the inspiration for the assembly of the anthology.
Only five of Albion's 63 children are daughters. Omissions have also been noted, such as the Liverpool poets
. Missing are major figures, for example J. H. Prynne
and Veronica Forrest-Thomson
. The British underground poetry scene in the mid-sixties was a male-dominated affair. Later anthologists, also fail on gender parity in their representations of the period.
Andrew Crozier
and Tim Longville's A Various Art, a later anthology from 1987, has been seen as a reply. Iain Sinclair
writing in the introduction to Conductors of Chaos (1996) puts its success down to the Zeitgeist
of "frivolous times".
This event was almost entirely organised by Alex Troochi and there are several very well known artists who were at this performance that Horovitz doesn't even mention...
Not quite what the organisers intended...
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
, was edited by Michael Horovitz
Michael Horovitz
Michael Horovitz is an English poet, artist and translator.-Life and career:Michael Horovitz was the youngest of ten children who were brought to England from Nazi Germany by their parents, both of whom were part of a network of European-rabbinical families...
and published by Penguin Books
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane and V.K. Krishna Menon. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large...
in 1969 (see 1969 in poetry
1969 in poetry
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* FIELD magazine founded at Oberlin College...
). According to Martin Booth
Martin Booth
Martin Booth was a prolific British novelist and poet. He also worked as a teacher and screenwriter, and was the founder of the Sceptre Press.-Early life:...
it was "virtually a manifesto of New Departures doctrine and dogma".
Its appearance was a key step in the emergence to some kind of public attention of many of the poets associated with the British Poetry Revival
British Poetry Revival
The British Poetry Revival is the general name given to a loose poetry movement in Britain that took place in the 1960s and 1970s. The revival was a modernist-inspired reaction to the Movement's more conservative approach to British poetry.-Beginnings:...
, many of whom were included. It was perhaps the classic 'hippie
Hippie
The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The etymology of the term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's...
' collection of British poetry
British poetry
British poetry is a term rarely used, as almost all poets of the British world are clearly identified with one of the various nations within those areas....
, with its self-conscious invocation of William Blake
William Blake
William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...
and performance poets
Performance poetry
Performance poetry is poetry that is specifically composed for or during a performance before an audience. During the 1980s, the term came into popular usage to describe poetry written or composed for performance rather than print distribution.-History:...
. It has also been subject to much criticism, qua anthology of its time, both for its inclusions and exclusions.
Book
Children of Albion was published as a paperback measuring 18 by. It is 382 pages long and contains a contents list, a dedication to Allen GinsbergAllen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
, work by 63 poets in alphabetical order of surname, an essay, 'Afterwords' by the editor, and 'further reading' and 'acknowledgements' sections. The front cover features a detail from Glad Day, an engraving by Blake.
Poets featured
The poets featured in Children of Albion are:
|
Pete Hoida Pete Hoida was born in Birkenhead in 1944. He ceased writing circa 1985, after which he dedicated his time wholly to painting.- Poetry :He would be better represented by these later volumes: final publication “Literary Breakfast”, “The Correct Demanded Direction”, and “Stumble”, which were only... Anselm Hollo Anselm Paul Alexis Hollo is a Finnish poet and translator. He has lived in the United States since 1967.-Life and work:... Frances Horovitz Frances Horovitz was an English poet and broadcaster.-Biography:Frances Horovitz was born in London. She was educated at Bristol University and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. As a reader and presenter for the BBC, she acquired a reputation for care of preparation and quality of... Roger Jones Roger L. Jones is an American mathematician.He has his Ph.D. in mathematics from Rutgers University and has recently retired from a professorship in mathematics at DePaul University in Chicago. There he taught everything from remedial math to graduate-level courses... Bernard Kops Bernard Kops is a British Dramatist, poet and novelist, born in the East End of London in 1926.His first play, The Hamlet of Stepney Green, was produced at the Oxford Playhouse in 1957... Herbert Lomas (poet) Herbert Lomas was a British poet and translator. He served in the infantry from 1943 to 1946). He then graduated from University of Liverpool, and taught at the University of Helsinki and Borough Road College.... Tom McGrath (playwright) This article is about the Scottish playwright. For other people named Tom McGrath, see Thomas McGrath.Tom McGrath was a Scottish playwright and jazz pianist.... Stuart Mills Stuart Mills is a Scottish professional footballer who plays as a right winger. He is currently without a club following his release Clyde.-Career:... Ted Milton Ted Milton is an English poet and musician, best known for leading the Blurt, an experimental jazz-rock group.Milton grew up in Africa, Canada and Great Britain. He published some early poems in magazines like Paris Review... |
Adrian Mitchell Adrian Mitchell FRSL was an English poet, novelist and playwright. A former journalist, he became a noted figure on the British anti-authoritarian Left. For almost half a century he was the foremost poet of the country's anti-Bomb movement... Philip O'Connor Philip O'Connor was a British writer and surrealist poet, who also painted. He was one of the 'Wheatsheaf writers' of 1930s Fitzrovia... Tom Pickard Tom Pickard is a poet, radio and film maker who was an important initiator of the movement known as the British Poetry Revival.... Tom Raworth Tom Raworth is a London-born poet and visual artist who has published over forty books of poetry and prose since 1966. His works has been translated and published in many countries. Raworth is a key figure in the British Poetry Revival. He lives in Brighton, England.-Early life and work:Raworth... Barry Tebb Barry Tebb is an English poet, publisher and author. He was born in Leeds, West Yorkshire in 1942.His poetry was first published by Alan Tarling's 'Poet and Printer Press' in the sixties, along with Ted Hughes, Michael Longley and Ian Crichton Smith... Chris Torrance Chris Torrance is a poet and musician associated with the British Poetry Revival.- Biography :Born in Edinburgh, Torrance grew up in London and moved to rural Wales in 1970. He has been teaching creative writing at the Cardiff University since 1976... Alexander Trocchi Alexander Whitelaw Robertson Trocchi was a Scottish novelist.-Early career:Trocchi was born in Glasgow to a Scottish mother and Italian father. After working as a seaman on the Murmansk convoys, he attended University of Glasgow. On graduation he obtained a traveling grant that enabled him to... Gael Turnbull Gael Turnbull was a Scottish poet who was an important precursor of the British Poetry Revival.Turnbull was born in Edinburgh and grew up in the North of England and in Canada... Michael X Michael X , born Michael de Freitas in Trinidad and Tobago to a Portuguese father and a Bajan-born mother, was a self-styled black revolutionary and civil rights activist in 1960s London. He was also known as Michael Abdul Malik and Abdul Malik... |
Historical context
In 1962, Penguin published Al AlvarezAl Alvarez
Al Alvarez is an English poet, writer and critic who publishes under the name A. Alvarez and Al Alvarez....
's anthology The New Poetry
The New Poetry
The New Poetry was a poetry anthology edited by Al Alvarez, published in 1962 and in a revised edition in 1966. It was greeted at the time as a significant review of the post-war scene in English poetry....
. This marked the beginnings of a backlash against what Alvarez labelled the 'gentility' of the Movement poets. Alvarez's favoured alternative were poets like Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Born in Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College, Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a professional poet and writer...
and Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes
Edward James Hughes OM , more commonly known as Ted Hughes, was an English poet and children's writer. Critics routinely rank him as one of the best poets of his generation. Hughes was British Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death.Hughes was married to American poet Sylvia Plath, from 1956 until...
and others who connected with American
Poetry of the United States
American poetry, the poetry of the United States, arose first as efforts by colonists to add their voices to English poetry in the 17th century, well before the constitutional unification of the thirteen colonies...
confessional poets like Robert Lowell
Robert Lowell
Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV was an American poet, considered the founder of the confessional poetry movement. He was appointed the sixth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress where he served from 1947 until 1948...
and John Berryman
John Berryman
John Allyn Berryman was an American poet and scholar, born in McAlester, Oklahoma. He was a major figure in American poetry in the second half of the 20th century and was considered a key figure in the Confessional school of poetry...
.
Meanwhile, Donald Allen
Donald Allen
Donald Merriam Allen , influential editor, publisher, and translator of contemporary American literature. He is perhaps best known for his project The New American Poetry 1945-1960 , among the several important anthologies of contemporary American innovative writing he made available to the public...
's 1960 anthology, The New American Poetry 1945-1960
The New American Poetry 1945-1960
The New American Poetry 1945–1960 was a poetry anthology edited by Donald Allen, and published in 1960. It aimed to pick out the "third generation" of American modernist poets, and included quite a number of poems fresh from the little magazines of the late 1950s. In the longer term it attained a...
introduced British and other readers to a whole range of work other than the confessionals. Allen included work by the Beat generation
Beat generation
The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...
, the Black Mountain
Black Mountain poets
The Black Mountain poets, sometimes called projectivist poets, were a group of mid 20th century American avant-garde or postmodern poets centered on Black Mountain College.-Background:...
, New York School
New York School
The New York School was an informal group of American poets, painters, dancers, and musicians active in the 1950s, 1960s in New York City...
and Deep image
Deep image
Deep image is a term coined by U.S. poets Jerome Rothenberg and Robert Kelly in the second issue of Trobar in 1961. They used it to describe poetry written by them and by Diane Wakoski and Clayton Eshleman....
poets and others from outside the mainstream.
As British 1960s counterculture developed (see Swinging London
Swinging London
Swinging London is a catch-all term applied to the fashion and cultural scene that flourished in London, in the 1960s.It was a youth-oriented phenomenon that emphasised the new and modern. It was a period of optimism and hedonism, and a cultural revolution. One catalyst was the recovery of the...
), the influence of these poets became more widespread, and many of the younger British poets began to experiment with local variants of the new poetics. Publishing outlets for the new poetry started to emerge, including Raworth's Matrix Press, and Goliard Press (which he ran with Barry Hall
Barry Hall
Barry Hall is a former Australian rules footballer. Hall is considered to be one of the best forwards of the modern era, being named All-Australian, leading his club's goalkicking on nine occasions and captaining the Sydney Swans to their 2005 AFL Grand Final victory...
) and Horovitz's own New Departures magazine and press.
Contacts between poets on both sides of the Atlantic developed, culminating in the International Poetry Incarnation
International Poetry Incarnation
The International Poetry Incarnation was an event at the Royal Albert Hall in Londonon June 11, 1965.In May, 1965, Allen Ginsberg arrived at Better Books, London, and offered to read anywhere for free....
at the Royal Albert Hall
Royal Albert Hall
The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall situated on the northern edge of the South Kensington area, in the City of Westminster, London, England, best known for holding the annual summer Proms concerts since 1941....
on June 11, 1965, which featured readings by a range of British poets, as well as Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Ferlinghetti is an American poet, painter, liberal activist, and the co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers...
and others to an audience of 7,000 people. Horovitz was the main organizer of this event and this Afterwords essay makes it clear that the success of the Albert Hall happening
Happening
A happening is a performance, event or situation meant to be considered art, usually as performance art. Happenings take place anywhere , are often multi-disciplinary, with a nonlinear narrative and the active participation of the audience...
was the inspiration for the assembly of the anthology.
Reputation
One of the main criticisms levelled at Children of Albion is that it contains work by a large number of poets who subsequently ceased writing, or at least publishing, poetry of any note. The book also has been criticised for omitting poets who did not share Horovitz's enthusiasms for Blake and/or performance.Only five of Albion's 63 children are daughters. Omissions have also been noted, such as the Liverpool poets
Liverpool poets
The Liverpool Poets are a number of influential 1960s poets from Liverpool, England, influenced by 1950s Beat poetry. They were involved in the 1960s Liverpool scene that gave rise to The Beatles, during a time when the city was termed by US beat poet Allen Ginsberg "the centre of the consciousness...
. Missing are major figures, for example J. H. Prynne
J. H. Prynne
Jeremy Halvard Prynne is a British poet closely associated with the British Poetry Revival.Prynne's early influences include Charles Olson and Donald Davie. His first book, Force of Circumstance and Other Poems was published in 1962; Prynne has excluded it from his canon...
and Veronica Forrest-Thomson
Veronica Forrest-Thomson
Veronica Forrest-Thomson grew up in Glasgow, Scotland, studied at the Universities of Liverpool and Cambridge, and later taught at the Universities of Leicester and Birmingham. She was both a poet and a critical theorist, and her critical study Poetic Artifice: A Theory of Twentieth-Century Poetry...
. The British underground poetry scene in the mid-sixties was a male-dominated affair. Later anthologists, also fail on gender parity in their representations of the period.
Andrew Crozier
Andrew Crozier
Andrew Thomas Knights Crozier was a poet associated with the British Poetry Revival.-Life:Crozier was educated at Dulwich College, and later Christ's College, Cambridge. His 1976 book Pleats won the Alice Hunt Bartlett Prize, awarded jointly that year with Lee Harwood...
and Tim Longville's A Various Art, a later anthology from 1987, has been seen as a reply. Iain Sinclair
Iain Sinclair
Iain Sinclair FRSL is a British writer and filmmaker. Much of his work is rooted in London, most recently within the influences of psychogeography.-Life and work:...
writing in the introduction to Conductors of Chaos (1996) puts its success down to the Zeitgeist
Zeitgeist
Zeitgeist is "the spirit of the times" or "the spirit of the age."Zeitgeist is the general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual or political climate within a nation or even specific groups, along with the general ambiance, morals, sociocultural direction, and mood associated with an era.The...
of "frivolous times".
See also
- 1969 in poetry1969 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* FIELD magazine founded at Oberlin College...
- 1969 in literature1969 in literatureThe year 1969 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* The first Booker Prize is awarded.* "Penelope Ashe", author of the bestselling novel Naked Came the Stranger, is found to be several people who each took a turn writing a chapter of what they described as "junk" in...
- English poetryEnglish poetryThe history of English poetry stretches from the middle of the 7th century to the present day. Over this period, English poets have written some of the most enduring poems in Western culture, and the language and its poetry have spread around the globe. Consequently, the term English poetry is...
- List of poetry anthologies
This event was almost entirely organised by Alex Troochi and there are several very well known artists who were at this performance that Horovitz doesn't even mention...
Not quite what the organisers intended...