Leicester Poetry Society is a small but long-lasting group, usually with a membership roll of 30 to 40, including both established poets and non-writing members who enjoy reading, discussing  and listening to poems.

Our earliest website, dating from 2001-2, was created by the late Pat Corina and is still visible at
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/p.corina. The flashing banner on our Home page is part note of remembrance.

 The Society was started in the late 1940s by a very lively character, Harold Frankel. He is recalled as ‘always driving round in a little car with the back seat overflowing with books of poetry’

G.S.Fraser, poet and academic arrived in Leicester to a  University appointment in the English Department in 1958. Fraser ran a poetry workshop at Vaughan College for 20 years, where Frankel joined his class. Fraser became engrossed with poetry teaching in the provinces (hitherto he had led a sociable literary life in Chelsea ) and took over chairmanship of the Poetry Society. See http://jacketmagazine.com/20/fraser.html for more about G.S.Fraser, who is pictured left, reading at the home of the celebrated Buddhist judge, Christmas Humphries.  His wife, Paddy, who can be seen in the background with a cat, is still the President of the Society.

The Society had a close relationship with Omens magazine, of which Fraser was general editor, and which was an early publisher of Veronica Forrest-Thomson. Events from the this period were mainly held in the Quiet Room of the Percy Gee Building at Leicester University (the Society has led a peripatetic existence - lodging in educational, historical and both alcoholic and teetotal institutions throughout the city) while a typical programme (such as that from September 1976) records a Start of Season Party, Princess Charlotte. Buffet. 30p members, 40p visitors.

G S Fraser was considered one of the New Apocalypse poets in his youth, became principal poetry reviewer on the TLS and an acclaimed author of many books, including The Modern Writer and his World, Metre, Rhyme and Free Verse and Essays on Twentieth Century Poets. As a reviewer, he was an early advocate of Philip Larkin, yet at the same time he was an appreciative writer on Ezra Pound. An annual event is held in May in his memory (see Programme ).

Established poets from all corners of the globe have read to members in Leicester. Recent  readers have included Jack Mapanje, Neil Astley, Michael Haslam, Amanda Dalton, Robin Robertson, Jane Draycott, Ian Duhig, Alan Halsey, David Kennedy, Wendy Cope, Geraldine Monk, Andrew Duncan, Tom Leonard, Peter Forbes, Lavinia Greenlaw, Pauline Stainer, W.N.Herbert, Paul Farley, EA Markham, Mimi Khalvati, Pascale Petit, Christopher Logue, Katrina Porteous, John Hartley Williams, Robert Minhinnick, Vicki Feaver, Peter Porter, Richard Burns, Lawrence Sail, Myra Schneider, Robert Crawford, Sam Smith, Charles Tomlinson,  Jackie Kay.while Robert Lowell, Jon Silkin, Robert Graves, Stevie Smith, R.S.Thomas, W.S.Graham, Peter Redgrove, Veronica Forrest-Thompson, Gavin Ewart, C.H.Sisson were among the noted names of the past.