In November 1952 while at Downing College, Cambridge University, Philip Hobsbaum along with two friends—Tony Davis and Neil Morris—dissatisfied with the way poetry was read aloud in the university, decided to place a notice in the undergraduate newspaper Varsity for people interested in forming a poetry discussion group.
The London meetings started in 1955 once a week, on Friday evenings, at first at Hobsbaum's flat and later at the house of Edward Lucie-Smith.
The poets gathered to discuss each other's work, putting into practice the sort of analysis and objective comment in keeping with the principles of Hobsbaum's Cambridge tutor F. R. Leavis and of the New Criticism in general.
Lucie-Smith wrote, in a letter to Hobsbaum dated November 1961: 'This is a group of poets who find it possible to meet and discuss each other's work helpfully and without backbiting or backscratching…we have no axe to grind — this isn't a gang and there's no monolithic body of doctrine to which everyone must subscribe'.
[1] Lucie-Smith and Hobsbaum edited A Group Anthology (London: Oxford University Press, 1963); in the foreword the aim is described of writing 'frank autobiographical poems' and a 'poetry of direct experience'.