The Poets

Lascelles Abercrombie

Today Lascelles Abercrombie (1881-1938) is the least well-known of the six Dymock Poets. Keith Clark succinctly summarised the reasons: “His verse seems turgid and wordy, his themes too metaphysical and heavy”. But Abercrombie and his work were highly admired in the early years of the twentieth century. In September 1914 Frost wrote to an American friend about him:

Robert Ross wrote “The fellow I am living with at present is the last poet in your Victorian Anthology. If you want to see him to better advantage …
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Rupert Brooke

Most people think of Rupert Brooke (1887-1915) as a war poet, despite the fact that only a small percentage of his poetic output occurred after the outbreak of war. Pedants might argue that Brooke wasn’t really a ‘Dymock Poet’. They could point out that he visited the area on only two occasions (unless other visits went unrecorded and biographers have found no evidence of them). Both visits were brief. And there isn’t any one poem that was written while he was in the area or has any theme deriving specifically from it.

On the other hand ‘The Soldier’, one of the most famous sonnets in the English language, …
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John Drinkwater

Of the six Dymock Poets, John Drinkwater (1882-1937) was the most versatile as an artist. He was a poet, playwright, essayist, anthologist, actor, theatre producer and director, in addition to his day-to-day job as manager of Barry Jackson’s Birmingham Repertory Theatre – described by Drinkwater as “the most distinguished playhouse in the country” when it opened in February 1913. He gradually got to know each of the Dymock Poets in turn, although his connections with Frost and Thomas seem fairly inconsequential.

Drinkwater grew up with a deep passion for the countryside of Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Oxfordshire. He left Oxford High School at 15 and worked at an insurance company in Nottingham. The hours were long and the work tedious, but he read widely and began to write poetry …
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Robert Frost

Robert Frost (1874-1963) was 38 when he left New England for a long visit to England. He had worked as a farmer and teacher in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, but had always wanted to be a poet. Only a few of his poems had been published in American newspapers and magazines, and in England he was completely unknown as a poet. When he arrived in London in 1912 he had with him a trunk full of unpublished poems in various stages of completion. His first book, A Boy’s Will, was published in London in 1913 by David Nutt, one of the oldest and most respected publishing firms in London at that time. Reviews were encouraging but not overly enthusiastic. Still, Frost’s publisher felt confident enough to bring out another volume of his the following year. This time there was widespread acclaim for North of Boston, and Frost soon had a reputation as an important new poet on both sides of the Atlantic. By the time of his death in 1963 his reputation extended around the world; he was a cultural ambassador for America, a poet laureate to the world. …
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Wilfrid Gibson

Today it is difficult to realise how popular Wilfrid Wilson Gibson (1878-1962) was in the second decade of the twentieth century – popular for both his poetry and his personality. Brooke and Frost took to him instantly – he must have had a warm and easy-going temperament – and everyone had a good word to say about him. “I have no friend here like Wilfrid Gibson,” wrote Frost to an American friend in March 1914. Brooke affectionately called him ‘Wibson’ and his letters to Marsh and others are full of concern for Gibson’s well-being and comments about how nice he is. D.H. Lawrence wrote to Eddie Marsh in November 1913 that “I think Gibson is one of the dearest and most lovable personalities I know.” John Middleton Murry, in a letter of reminiscence to Christopher Hassall, says “We quickly introduced Wilfrid to Eddie [Marsh] . . . and Eddie took to him as naturally as we had done, for his singular integrity.”

Around 1906 Gibson ceased writing pseudo-Tennysonian verse and began writing realistic poems in which he tried to reflect the speech of ordinary people …
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Edward Thomas

TEdward Thomas (1878-1917) probably wrote more words in his lifetime than any of the other Dymock Poets – or so it seems from his voluminous output. But until November 1914, when he was 36 and a half years old, he was the only Dymock Poet who had not written any poetry. One can’t help wondering if he felt like the odd man out, especially when living near Frost, Gibson and Abercrombie during August 1914.

Thomas was a respected biographer and literary critic at the beginning of the twentieth century, but he always complained about the financial pressure he was under to produce a constant stream of books and articles. William Cooke estimates that between 1905 and 1915 “he wrote twenty-two books of prose and more than a million words in articles and reviews.” In a letter to Gordon Bottomley in 1903, complaining about having so much work to do, he tries to make light of it: “Inkitas inkitatum. All is ink.” …
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