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The Poetry Society

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24-690: The Poetry Society is a membership organisation, open to all, whose stated aim is "to promote the study, use and enjoyment of poetry". The society was founded in London in February 1909 as the Poetry Recital Society, becoming the Poetry Society in 1912. Its first president was Lady Margaret Sackville . From its current premises in Covent Garden , London, The Poetry Society publishes The Poetry Review ,

48-534: A factor in her refusal, the main reason was that they were of different religions. Sackville was Roman Catholic , while MacDonald was raised in the Presbyterian Church , later joining the Free Church of Scotland . Sackville never married. At the outbreak of World War I , she joined the anti-war Union of Democratic Control . In 1916 she published a collection of poems called The Pageant of War . It included

72-692: A poetry magazine. Established in 1912, its current editor is the poet Wayne Holloway-Smith , who succeeded Emily Berry in 2023. Berry herself succeeded Maurice Riordan in 2017. Fiona Sampson was the magazine's editor from 2005 to 2012. The society organises several competitions, including the British National Poetry Competition , the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award, The Popescu Prize , The Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry and

96-541: The Pall Mall Gazette . She published her first book of poems, Floral Symphony , in 1900. In 1910, she edited A Book of Verse by Living Women . In her introduction, she noted that poetry was one of the few arts in which women were allowed to engage without opposition and made a direct connection between women's social freedom and the freedom of the imagination. When the Poetry Society was formed in 1912, Sackville

120-540: The Geoffrey Dearmer Award . The society also ran the Alice Hunt Bartlett Prize from 1986 to 1997. This article about a literary society or organization is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Margaret Sackville Lady Margaret Sackville (24 December 1881 – 18 April 1963) was an English poet and children's author. Born at 60 Grosvenor Street, Mayfair , Sackville

144-580: The House of Lords the same month. In the second Labour government of 1929 to 1931 he served as Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms (government chief whip in the House of Lords ) and Under-Secretary of State for War between 1929 and 1930, as Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries between 1930 and 1931 and as a Lord-in-waiting between 1929 and 1931. In 1931,

168-554: The House of Lords until 1966, but from then on until his death ten years later only spoke twice, both times in 1972. Apart from his career in national politics, De La Warr was Mayor of Bexhill-on-Sea between 1932 and 1934 and a Justice of the Peace and Deputy Lieutenant for Sussex . In 1956 he was made a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire . The De La Warr Pavilion

192-577: The Labour Party to National Labour ministers meant that De La Warr was dropped, and he did not return to government for eleven years. In 1951, in Churchill's peacetime Conservative government, De La Warr was appointed Postmaster General , and as such, was in charge at the time of the Eastcastle Street robbery , before leaving office for the final time in 1955. He continued to contribute regularly to

216-589: The Labour government fell and MacDonald formed a National Government . De La Warr was one of only a tiny handful of Labour ministers to join it, and before the 1931 general election was instrumental in the formation of the National Labour Organisation to provide a vehicle of support for MacDonald and other ex-Labour members of the National Government. He resumed office as Parliamentary Secretary to

240-572: The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, a post he held until 1935, and then served under Stanley Baldwin as Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education between 1935 and 1936 and as Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies between 1936 and 1937. In 1936, he was sworn of the Privy Council . In 1937, new Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain gave De La Warr his first cabinet post as Lord Keeper of

264-534: The Privy Seal . Like several other younger members of the cabinet, De La Warr found himself disagreeing over the government's foreign policy, and contemplated resigning over the Munich Agreement , but decided not to. In the aftermath of the agreement he was transferred in 1938 to be President of the Board of Education . During his time in this post, it was expected that he would oversee legislation for raising of

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288-643: The absence of overt patriotic elements in The Pageant of War and its memorialisation of all the dead: soldiers, non-combatants and refugees. She spent much of her adult life in Midlothian and Edinburgh , where she became the first president of Scottish PEN and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature . She was a member of Marc-André Raffalovich 's Whitehouse Terrace salon , where she would meet guests including Henry James , Compton Mackenzie and

312-530: The artist Hubert Wellington. In 1922, she published A Masque of Edinburgh . This was performed at the Music Hall, George Street, Edinburgh , and depicted the history of Edinburgh in 11 scenes, from the Romans to a meeting between the poet Robert Burns and the writer Sir Walter Scott . Sackville lived at 30 Regent Terrace , Edinburgh, from 1930 to 1932. In 1936, Sackville moved to Cheltenham , where she lived for

336-570: The direction in which the Society was heading soon became obvious—poetry was made an excuse for pleasant social exchanges, for irrelevant snobbery, for the disagreeable consequences of organised association." She had a passionate 15-year love affair with Ramsay MacDonald , recorded in letters they wrote to each other between 1913 and 1929. MacDonald was a widower and repeatedly proposed to her, but she declined to be his wife. His biographer David Marquand speculated that, although social considerations were

360-451: The poem "Nostra Culpa", denouncing women who betrayed their sons by not speaking out against the war. Her sister-in-law, Muriel De La Warr, and her nephew, Herbrand Sackville, 9th Earl De La Warr , were also involved in the peace movement. Her brother, Gilbert Sackville, 8th Earl De La Warr, was killed during the conflict in 1915. The spare and angry strength of Sackville's war poems has attracted recent critical attention. Brian Murdoch notes

384-579: The rest of her life. She died of a heart condition at Rokeby Nursing Home, Cheltenham, in 1963. Somerville, Georgina (ed.) (1953). Harp Aeolian: Commentaries on the Works of Lady Margaret Sackville . Cheltenham: Burrows Press. Herbrand Sackville, 9th Earl De La Warr Herbrand Edward Dundonald Brassey Sackville, 9th Earl De La Warr , GBE , PC , JP , DL (20 June 1900 – 28 January 1976), styled Lord Buckhurst until 1915 (and sometimes nicknamed "Buck De La Warr" after that),

408-407: The school leaving age to 15, but the outbreak of World War II deferred all such plans until the end of hostilities. In April 1940 De La Warr became First Commissioner of Works in a series of ministerial changes by Chamberlain, but was demoted from the cabinet. The following month Chamberlain was replaced by Winston Churchill , who formed an all-party coalition government, and the objections of

432-557: The title as a minor . On reaching 18, he refused as a conscientious objector to take part in active combat, but joined the Royal Naval Reserve (trawler section). De La Warr became the first hereditary peer to join the Labour Party , and in February 1924, then aged 23, was one of the youngest ever ministers when he was appointed Lord in Waiting in the first Labour government of Ramsay MacDonald . He made his maiden speech in

456-516: Was a British politician. He was the first hereditary peer to join the Labour Party and became a government minister at the age of 23. He was later one of the few Labour politicians to follow Ramsay MacDonald in the formation of the National Government and the National Labour Organisation . However, he ended his political career by serving as Postmaster General in the last Conservative administration of Winston Churchill . De La Warr

480-600: Was built in 1935 in Bexhill-on-Sea and was named after Lord De La Warr. The "De La Warr" in both the pavilion's name and the Earl's name is pronounced "Delaware" (as in the American state named for his ancestor Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr ). Lord De La Warr was twice married. He married firstly Diana Helena, daughter of Henry Gerard Leigh, in 1920. They had two sons and a daughter. Their younger son Thomas Sackville (1922–1943)

504-600: Was killed in action during the Second World War . After Diana's death in March 1966, he married secondly Sylvia, Countess of Kilmuir , in 1968. She was the daughter of Edith and cotton broker William Reginald Harrison, widow of David Maxwell Fyfe, 1st Earl of Kilmuir , and the sister of actor Sir Rex Harrison . One of his sisters was Lady Avice Ela Muriel Sackville (d. 1985). He attended her marriage to Stewart Menzies , (leader of British wartime intelligence or 'C'), dressed in

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528-461: Was made its first president. She had also been the first president of its predecessor, the Poetry Recital Society, formed in 1909. Joy Grant, in her biography of Harold Monro , writes that Sackville "spoke well and to the point at the inauguration, hoping that the Society would 'never become facile and "popular", to turn to a merely trivial gathering of persons amiably interested in the same ideal'. Her half-expressed fears were unfortunately fulfilled:

552-479: Was the son of Gilbert Sackville, 8th Earl De La Warr , and Muriel Agnes, daughter of Thomas Brassey, 1st Earl Brassey , eldest son of the railway engineer Thomas Brassey . He was educated at Eton and Magdalen College, Oxford . The son of a Conservative father and Liberal mother, he developed trends towards socialism at university. In 1915 his father was killed in the First World War , and he succeeded to

576-485: Was the youngest child of Reginald Windsor Sackville , 7th Earl De La Warr . She was a second cousin of Vita Sackville-West . She began to write poetry at an early age and when she was 16 became a protégée of Wilfrid Scawen Blunt . With his encouragement, she had her early poems published in periodicals such as The English Review , the Englishwoman's Review , Country Life , The Nation , The Spectator and

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