Martin Bell was born in Hampshire in 1918. He was the leading member of the 'lost generation' of English poets whose careers were interrupted by the Second World War. He was a prominent member of The Group during the fifties, and a major influence on younger poets like Peter Redgrove and Peter Porter. His poetry reached a wide audience during the sixties through Penguin Modern Poets, and in 1967 he published his Collected Poems,1937-1966, his first and last book. He died in poverty in Leeds in 1978. Bell was also a champion and brilliant translator of French Surrealist poets. An edition of his translations of Robert Desnos, A la Mystérieuse / Les Ténèbres, was published in 2018 by Art Translated with a foreword by Karl O'Hanlon. Bell's Complete Poems, edited by Peter Porter, was first published by Bloodaxe in 1988.
