This thesis proceeds with a number of simple, but bold, contentions: that the work of Roy Fisher and Lee Harwood represents a considerable achievement in British poetry; that its merits have been obscured by the persistence of the Movement orthodoxy which established itself in the 1950s; that it formed part of a still-largely unrecognised poetry renaissance or revival, from 1960 onwards; and that there is a particular, common poetics inherent in their work <which can also be found in the works of some other poets of the " revival" ) . In the first chapter, "The Persistence of the Movement", the dominant tradition in British poetry is examined from the point of view of the claims and work of its major representative anthologies. Chapter 2, "Counter-Movements", is largely an historical account of the British Poetry Revival, supplemented by an examination of the fate of modernism as regards the two schools of poetry; and the presentation of the tenets of a postmodern world view, emphasising the role of indeterminacy and discontinuity. "A Note on Rhyth~' isolates questions of rhythmical indeterminacy and serves to begin to focus upon the works of Fisher and Harwood. The following two chapters are sequential readings of the two poets' works, concentrating on the development of their working poetics. The conclusion relates these poetics, combines them, and suggests a specific poetics which may apply also to other writers discussed in passing in Chapter 2.