Complete Poems

by Martin Bell

Born in Hampshire in 1918, Martin Bell was the leading member of the 'lost generation' of English poets whose careers were interrupted by the War. He was a prominent member of The Group during the fifties, and a major influence on younger poets like Peter Redgrove and Peter Porter. His poetry reached a wide audience during the sixties through Penguin Modern Poets, and in 1967 he published his Collected Poems,1937-1966, his first and last book. Bell was also a champion and brilliant translator of French Surrealist poets. He died in poverty in Leeds in 1978. Like other 'provincial' working-class contemporaries, Bell wrote fantastical, highly erudite, biting, belligerent poetry. And yet – as Philip Hobsbaum said – he also wrote 'some of the most delicate love poems of our time' as well as 'one of the major war poems in the language'. A. Alvarez called him 'an emotional tightrope walker... He writes a rather bitter, tensely colloquial verse based, it seems, on a radical dislike for both himself and pretty much everything else.'

Genres: Poetry

242 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1988

About the author

Martin Bell is a British UNICEF (UNICEF UK) Ambassador, a former broadcast war reporter and former independent politician who became the Member of Parliament (MP) for Tatton from 1997 to 2001. He is sometimes known as "the man in the white suit".

Reviews

[Cooper Renner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the grand surprise I’d hoped for but not bad. Some epigrams are genuinely funny; occasionally they just sound like an old grouch; but at least it’s not random thoughts about how he woke up that morning and looked out the window and sighed.

[R.J. Lynch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whenever I mention Martin Bell (which I have to do quite often because so few have heard of him) I have to say (at least if my interlocutor is British), "No, not that Martin Bell. Not the priggish oaf in the white suit. Martin Bell the poet." It's a shame he isn't better known, because he deserves to be. I have made it clear to my family that, when my end comes, Letter to a Friend is to be read at my funeral. I can think of no better way to be remembered.

[!Tæmbuŝu]

Reviewed by The Independent (15 Feb 2013)