Charles Bainbridge freed us from the constraints of the current British scene with his entertaining and informative talk on Frank o’Hara at our June meeting in the Camden Centre, Tunbridge Wells. It is a long time since we opened our ears to poetry from outside the UK, so it was refreshing to recharge the batteries for our own writing and to be enthused about a style so different, with flamboyant self-portraits, mock melodrama, the enjoyment of role-play and silliness, including mockery of English aristocratic posturing in the early poems. After receiving the Hopgood Prize for poetry, Charles told us, o’Hara’s style changed. He stayed wild, chaotic, sarcastic and violent, yet also evidenced Romanticisim. His poetry remained idosyncratic, but developed in later years, with a controlled depth of voice and phrases that reach out to include us all.
The Kent & Sussex Poetry Society 