English poetry

The 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 European culture, and the language and its poetry have spread around the globe. Consequently, the term English poetry is unavoidably ambiguous. It can mean poetry written in England (and, by extension, the United Kingdom), or poetry written in English.

The oldest poetry written in the area currently known as England was composed in Anglo-Saxon, a precursor to the English language that is not something a typical modern English-speaker could be expected to be able to read. In addition, there was a tradition of English poets writing also in Latin and classical Greek. Today's multicultural English society is likely to produce some interesting poetry written in a wide range of other languages, although such poetries are proving slow to emerge.

With the growth of British trade and the British Empire, the English language has been widely used outside England. In the twenty-first century, only a small percentage of the world's native English speakers live in England, and there is also a vast population of non-native speakers of English who are capable of writing poetry in the language. A number of major national poetries, including the poetry of the United States, Australian, New Zealand and Canadian poetry have emerged and developed. Since 1922, Irish poetry has also been increasingly viewed as a separate area of study.

This article focuses on poetry written in English by poets born or spending a significant part of their lives in the UK. However, given the nature of the subject, this guideline has been applied with common sense, and reference is made to poetry in other languages or poets who are not primarily British where appropriate.


The earliest English poetry

The earliest known English poem is a hymn on the creation written by Cædmon (fl. 658-680), an illiterate herdsman who produced extemporaneous poetry at a monastery at Whitby. This poem marks the beginning of Anglo-Saxon poetry.

Although the great epic Beowulf has been dated on internal evidence to around 608, the next verifiable event in the history of English poetry is the writing of The Dream of the Rood, parts of which were carved on the Ruthwell Cross around 700. The most notable poems of the 8th century include Christ II, Elene, The Fates of the Apostles, and Juliana, all signed by Cynewulf. The second half of the 10th century saw the compilation of four important poetry manuscript volumes; Junius manuscript, the Vercelli Book, the Exeter Book, and the Beowulf manuscript and the composition of The Battle of Maldon, which tells the story of a battle between the English and the Danes in 991.

In addition to Beowulf and religious verse, Anglo-Saxon poetry encompasses poems of exile such as The Wanderer and The Seafarer, the magnificent elegy on the remains of Roman Bath called The Ruin, riddles and Medical charms. Although most surviving manuscript copies are written out in unbroken prose, scholars have been able to recreate the metrical structure. The poems were written in a particular form of alliterative verse. This form consists of a basic line of four beats or stressed syllables and an irregular number of unstressed ones. The line is broken by a caesura somewhere between the second and third stresses and the alliteration occurs on stressed syllables only.


The Anglo-Norman period and the Later Middle Ages

With the Norman conquest of England, beginning in 1066, the situation of Anglo-Saxon altered for good. The language continued to be spoken and written at least up to the early 15th century, producing such important poems as Layamon's late 12th century epic Brut, the so called Gawain poet's Pearl, Patience, Cleanness, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and William Langland's magnificent Piers Plowman. However, Norman French became the language of political and legal power and of education. Given this state of affairs, remarkably little in the way of Norman French poetry of any note survives. Instead, the two languages merged over time to produce English and this language soon became the main vehicle for English poetry. In 1362, it also replaced French and Latin in Parliament and courts of law.

A number of early 14th century songs have survived in manuscripts including British Library Harley 2253. The first major poet in the new language was, however, John Gower. Born around 1330, Gower was a near contemporary of Langland. His Confessio Amantis is one of the key poems of the period. Gower's slightly younger contemporary, Geoffrey Chaucer, was probably the major English poet of the Middle Ages. Along with society of the time, he shared a European world view dominated by the Catholic Church and recently rediscovered Greek philosophers, such as Aristotle, as well as Latin Church Fathers including Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. In the realm of poetry, this landscape was dominated by Virgil and Dante. Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is one of the few contemporary poems to bear comparison with Dante's Divine Comedy.

The major English-born poets of the 15th century were John Lydgate, who is now best remembered for two works – Troy Book and The Siege of Thebes, and John Skelton. However, the century really belongs to a group of remarkable Scottish writers. The rise of Scottish poetry began with the writing of The Kingis Quair by James I of Scotland. The main poets of this Scottish group were Robert Henryson, William Dunbar and Gavin Douglas. Henryson and, especially, Douglas introduced a note of almost savage satire, which may have owed something to the Gaelic bards, while Douglas' version of Virgil's Aeneid is one of the early monuments of Renaissance literary humanism in English.


The Renaissance in England

The Renaissance was slow in coming to insular Britain, with the generally accepted start date being around 1509. It is also generally accepted that the English Renaissance extended until the Reformation in 1660. However, a number of factors had prepared the way for the introduction of the new learning long before this start date. A number of medieval poets had, as already noted, shown an interest in the ideas of Aristotle and the writings of European Renaissance precursors such as Dante.

The introduction of movable-block printing by Caxton in 1474 provided the means for the more rapid dissemination of new or recently rediscovered writers and thinkers. Caxton also printed the works of Chaucer and Gower and these books helped establish the idea of a native poetic tradition that was linked to its European counterparts. In addition, the writings of British humanists like Thomas More and Thomas Elyot helped bring the ideas and attitudes associated with the new learning to an English audience.

Two other factors in the establishment of the English Renaissance were the Reformation and the opening of the era of English naval power and overseas exploration and expansion. The establishment of the Church of England in 1535 accelerated the process of questioning the Catholic world-view that had previously dominated intellectual and artistic life. At the same time, long-distance sea voyages helped provide the stimulus and information that underpinned a new understanding of the nature of the universe which resulted in the theories of Nicolas Copernicus and Johannes Kepler.


Early Renaissance poetry

With a small number of exceptions, the early years of the 16th century are not particularly notable. The Douglas Aeneid was completed in 1513 and John Skelton wrote poems that where transitional between the late Medieval and Renaissance styles. The new king, Henry VIII, was something of a poet himself. The most significant English poet of this period was Thomas Wyatt. Wyatt was among the first poets to write sonnets in English.


The Elizabethans

The Elizabethan period in poetry is characterised by a number of frequently overlapping developments. The introduction and adaptation of themes, models and verse forms from other European traditions and classical literature, the Elizabethan song tradition, the emergence of a courtly poetry often centred around the figure of the monarch and the growth of a verse-based drama are among the most important of these developments.



The 20th century

The first three decades

The Victorian era continued into the early years of the 20th century and two figures emerged as the leading representative of the poetry of the old era to act as a bridge into the new. These were Yeats and Thomas Hardy. Yeats, although not a modernist, was to learn a lot from the new poetic movements that sprang up around him and adapted his writing to the new circumstances. Hardy was, in terms of technique at least, a more traditional figure and was to be a reference point for various anti-modernist reactions, especially from the 1950s onwards.


The Thirties

The poets who began to emerge in the 1930s had two things in common; they had all been born too late to have any real experience of the pre-World War One world and they grew up in a period of social, economic and political turmoil. Perhaps as a consequence of these facts, themes of community, social (in)justice and war seem to dominate the poetry of the decade.


The Forties

The war poets

The 1940s opened with Britain at war and a new generation of war poets emerged in response. These included Keith Douglas, Alun Lewis, Henry Reed and F. T. Prince. As with the poets of the First World War, the work of these writers can be seen as something of an interlude in the history of 20th century poetry. Technically, many of these war poets owed something to the 1930s poets, but their work grew out of the particular circumstances in which they found themselves living and fighting.


The Fifties

The 1950s were dominated by three groups of poets, The Movement, The Group and a number of poets that gathered around the label Extremist Art.



The 1960s and 1970s

In the early part of the 1960s, the centre of gravity of mainstream poetry moved to Ireland, with the emergence of Heaney, Tom Paulin, Paul Muldoon and others. In Britain, the most cohesive groupings can, in retrospect, be seen to cluster around what might loosely be called the modernist tradition and draw on American as well as indigenous models.


English poetry now

The last three decades of the 20th century saw a number of short-lived poetic groupings such as the Martians. There was a growth in interest in women's writing and in poetry from Britain's ethnic groupings, especially the West Indian community. poets who emerged include Carol Ann Duffy, Andrew Motion, Craig Raine, Wendy Cope, James Fenton, Blake Morrison, Grace Lake, Liz Lockhead, Grace Lake, Linton Kwesi Johnson and Benjamin Zephaniah. There was also a growth in performance poetry fuelled by the Poetry Slam movement. A new generation of innovative poets has also sprung up in the wake of the Revival grouping.

Despite all of this activity, major publishers dropped their poetry lists and both young and established writers became increasingly reliant on small and medium sized presses, generally dependent on State funding. As of 2004, it appears that a still thriving literature is faced with an ever-decreasing audience.