Imagists

In 1912, the poet and critic Ezra Pound sent a poem by Hilda Doolittle to the Poetry magazine, signed H.D.Imagiste. This signature is widely recognized as the establishment of a group of English, Irish and American poets in London, whose work was defined by a distillation and economy of language. Consciously moving away from the decorative language of the Georgian poets, their free verse looked back to classical poetry to evoke the modern world. Critics and poets demanded an accurate presentation of subjects and the manifesto set out 'To use the language of common speech, but to employ always the exact word, not the nearly-exact, nor the merely decorative word'. In 1914, Des Imagistes: An Anthology was published and included the poems of James Joyce and D H Lawrence. The movement had dissolved by 1917, but their ideas would have an enduring effect on poetry throughout the 20th Century.