If I were constructing a course like this, David (and the world is no doubt grateful that I'm not) I wouldn't feel obliged to make any more than passing reference to the so-called Movement, and certainly not to claim that that pseudo-group in any way *was* the 1950s. When you think of the British poets who were active right through that decade, which includes Graham , Moore, Gascoyne, Bunting, Rafferty, Jones, FT Prince,.... dozens of them/  not to mention those who were well started by 1955. -- Tomlinson, Fisher, Hill, Silkin, Middleton...  I don't see why that bunch of grimly rationalist and empiricist poetasters (in which I include Larkin) should be allowed to take over the whole decade, except in PR terms.   I don't know if your remit includes Scotland and Ireland but if it does there is even less reason to let that particularly mean-spirited mood-mongering represent ten years of creative activity in poetry. For Scotland the "Movement" is as nothing. 

I'm sure there will be objections to this concerning "the times". But it seems to be now considered perfectly all right to forget completely poets of the 1910-20s such as Lascelles Abercrombie, de la Mare, Laurence Binyon, Masefield, Osbert Sitwell, Humbert Wolfe, John Davidson ... who no doubt represented "the times" as much as anyone else. 

This is all off the top of my head and there will be errors. 

Wouldn't it be a good idea to try not to think in terms of decades and movements or schools?  The Movement was in rebellion not just against 1940s Modernism, but against Percy Bysshe Shelley and poetical effusion itself, was it not?

Pr

On 1 Aug 2016, at 22:57, David Latane wrote:

"I dunno David - the Movement's pretty thin gruel to offer students as representative of this whole period. Likely to switch off interest in British poetry forever. Offering the individuals - Bunting, Larkin, Gunn, Hughes, even Hill (though no doubt a less conventional list could easily be assembled) might be much more engaging."

Jamie

It's a way into Larkin and the mood of the postwar period--that is, a feeling that the gruel was indeed thin--the next thing on the syllabus will be a viewing of the original Seven UP television show from 1963.

David Latané