Martin Bell (poet)

Martin Bell (1918–1978) was a British poet.

Life
Born in Hampshire, Bell attended University College, Southampton, where he received an honours degree in English and a diploma in Education. He served in World War II, from 1939 to 1946, in Lebanon, Syria, and Italy with the Royal Engineers. In the 1950s he held various teaching positions; and also worked for a time as opera critic for Queen magazine (a position he got through his friend Anthony Burgess.

In the mid-1950s a chance meeting with Peter Redgrove led to Bell's joining poetry group The Group. Until 1967, when he accepted a teaching postion at the University of Leeds, he was in regular attendance at Group meetings and was influential in its workings.

Writing
Bell was strongly influenced by T.S. Eliot and Jules Laforgue. He used complex ironies and was skilled at deflating by rhetorical devices. However, he was far from being a right-wing satirist.

His style came to maturity in the late 1950s. This relatively late development shows in the depth of experience manifest in his best poems.

His best-known poems are The Enormous Comics and Letter to a Friend.