Every decade from the 1930s to the 1960s saw the formation of poetic groups or movements that, for a while, appeared to dominate the poetic scene. After "the poets of the thirties" came the Apocalyptics of the 1940s, who were succeeded by the Movement of the 1950s and the Group of the 1960s. English (as distinct from Northern Irish) poets broke the pattern after 1970, declining to forge such alliances, perhaps because they did not hold in common the kind of religious, political, or aesthetic beliefs that might have bound them together. Of the generation who attained poetic maturity in the 1970s without the consciousness of belonging to a group, Carol Rumens is among the most talented.

Carol-Ann Lumley, daughter of Wilfred Arthur Lumley and Marjorie May Mills Lumley, was born at Lewisham, South London, on 10 December 1944 and spent her early childhood nearby at Forest Hill, where she attended...