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This chapter describes the creation of a poetry group in the 1950s, whose members included Ted Hughes, Philip Hobsbaum, Edward Lucie-Smith, Australian bookseller Peter Porter, and BBC producer George MacBeth. The Group may be considered a forerunner to the contemporary poetry workshop, or indeed the first proper poetry workshop in England. However, Group meetings had a distinct flavour that would make them unfamiliar to most who attend poetry workshops today. Not only was there the bearded and forbidding Hobsbaum in the chair and a heavy Leavisite aspect to proceedings, there was also the structure of the evening: its first half would concentrate on new work by one writer; this would then be followed by a coffee break, after which members could share work they particularly liked and, increasingly in later years, new poetry of their own. The Group also perpetuated ideas and an ambience as well as a social network that started in Oxford and Cambridge, and brought its members into contact with poets who had been very much outside both.

This chapter describes the creation of a poetry group in the 1950s, whose members included Ted Hughes, Philip Hobsbaum, Edward Lucie-Smith, Australian bookseller Peter Porter, and BBC producer George MacBeth. The Group may be considered a forerunner to the contemporary poetry workshop, or indeed the first proper poetry workshop in England. However, Group meetings had a distinct flavour that would make them unfamiliar to most who attend poetry workshops today. Not only was there the bearded and forbidding Hobsbaum in the chair and a heavy Leavisite aspect to proceedings, there was also the structure of the evening: its first half would concentrate on new work by one writer; this would then be followed by a coffee break, after which members could share work they particularly liked and, increasingly in later years, new poetry of their own. The Group also perpetuated ideas and an ambience as well as a social network that started in Oxford and Cambridge, and brought its members into contact with poets who had been very much outside both.

After Crockett Johnson died, Ruth Krauss struggled to live a life without him. She tried to cope, seeking a way forward. She decided to move out of their home and stayed with Dick and Betty Hahn in Baltimore. Krauss applied for a fellowship at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, where she had the opportunity to work among fellow artists. She also sought the company of poets closer to home, joining Dale Shaw’s Westport Poetry Workshop. In the fall of 1977, Krauss had her first residency at the MacDowell Colony, returning each year until 1982. She was also struggling with her body, her hip causing her pain for several years, and decided to undergo a hip replacement operation in Baltimore. Although the surgery was successful, she continued to feel that her body was betraying her. In the fall of 1987, the last of her many children’s books, Big and Little, was published by Scholastic.