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Pool Group
The Pool Group were a trio of filmmakers and poets consisting of H.D., Kenneth Macpherson, and Bryher (Annie Winifred Ellerman). Their work has been studied by poetry and film historians as well as by scholars of mysticism, feminism and psychoanalysis. The group produced four films of which Borderline is perhaps its best known, featuring the African American activist and entertainer Paul Robeson in the lead role. They also published a progressive and opinionated film journal called Close Up. The Pool Group were virtually forgotten for more than half a century after they broke up in the mid-1930s until the early 1980s when they were rediscovered by historians of 20th century arts and cinema.
The Pool Group was launched in 1927, from Riant Chateau, Territet, Switzerland and consisted of Bryher, Kenneth Macpherson and Hilda Doolittle, better known by her initials, H.D. Macpherson designed the Pool Group’s logo, which served as the cover of its catalog, showing concentric ripples in water.
Bryher's father was the shipowner and financier John Ellerman, who left her a very large inheritance. It was Bryher who took care of the finances of the group. Bryher knew from an early age that she was lesbian. Her wealth enabled her to give financial support to struggling writers, including Joyce and Edith Sitwell. She also helped with finance for the Paris bookshop Shakespeare and Company (founded by Sylvia Beach) and certain publishing ventures. She also helped provide funds to purchase a flat in Paris for struggling artist Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven.
H.D. (1886–1961) was born Hilda Doolittle in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. She was the daughter of a professor of astronomy and a musically-inclined mother. While still a school-girl she met Ezra Pound, who encouraged her writing and, in 1913, proposed that she adopt the pseudonym H.D. as a pseudonym under which to publish her first poems in Poetry Magazine. At the same time as the problematic relationship with Pound (they were twice engaged) H.D. was carrying on a love affair with a Pennsylvania woman art student, Frances Josepha Gregg. In 1919 H.D. had a daughter, Perdita, by the Scottish composer and music critic Cecil Gray (1895–1951). It was while she was pregnant that she formed an alliance with Bryher which was to last until H.D.’s death in 1961. The relationship was an open one, with both taking other partners. In 1921 Bryher entered into a marriage of convenience with the American author Robert McAlmon, whom she divorced in 1927. In 1928, H.D. became pregnant by Kenneth Macpherson, but the pregnancy was terminated later the same year. The complexities of H.D.'s relationships led her to consult the pioneer sexologist Havelock Ellis and to develop a deep interest in psychoanalysis: in the 1930s, she was to be analyzed by Freud, and her interest deeply marked her poems and other writings.
In 1927, Bryher married Kenneth Macpherson, a writer who shared her interest in film and who was at the same time H.D.'s lover. Macpherson, was a young Scottish painter with a passion for film. H.D. seems to have fallen in love with him though Macpherson was evidently exclusively homosexual. In Burier, Switzerland, overlooking Lake Geneva, the couple, along with Doolittle, built a Bauhaus-style structure that doubled as a home and film studio, which they named Kenwin. Bryher and Macpherson also formally adopted H.D.'s young daughter, Perdita, whose name they officially registered as Frances Perdita Macpherson.
Close Up was the Pool Group's main literary output, in the form of a monthly journal. The first issue of Close Up appeared in July 1927, with Macpherson as editor, Bryher as assistant editor, and H.D. and Oswell Blakeston as regular contributors.
The first issue announced that next month’s contributors would be Osbert Sitwell, Havelock Ellis, André Gide, Dorothy Richardson and Doolittle. As symbol of the group’s aims, this was explained in their 1929 catalog of publications:
. . . The expanding ripples from a stone dropped in a pool have become more a symbol for the growth of an idea than a simple matter of hydraulics.. .As the stone will cause a spread of ripples to the water's edge, so ideas once started will go to their unknown boundary. . . . These concentric expansions are exemplified in POOL, which is the source simply - the stone - the idea. POOL is seeking to express new trends and new will. Not, as we have said before, to grind any axe, but to make a centre for new ideas and modern thought.
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Pool Group
The Pool Group were a trio of filmmakers and poets consisting of H.D., Kenneth Macpherson, and Bryher (Annie Winifred Ellerman). Their work has been studied by poetry and film historians as well as by scholars of mysticism, feminism and psychoanalysis. The group produced four films of which Borderline is perhaps its best known, featuring the African American activist and entertainer Paul Robeson in the lead role. They also published a progressive and opinionated film journal called Close Up. The Pool Group were virtually forgotten for more than half a century after they broke up in the mid-1930s until the early 1980s when they were rediscovered by historians of 20th century arts and cinema.
The Pool Group was launched in 1927, from Riant Chateau, Territet, Switzerland and consisted of Bryher, Kenneth Macpherson and Hilda Doolittle, better known by her initials, H.D. Macpherson designed the Pool Group’s logo, which served as the cover of its catalog, showing concentric ripples in water.
Bryher's father was the shipowner and financier John Ellerman, who left her a very large inheritance. It was Bryher who took care of the finances of the group. Bryher knew from an early age that she was lesbian. Her wealth enabled her to give financial support to struggling writers, including Joyce and Edith Sitwell. She also helped with finance for the Paris bookshop Shakespeare and Company (founded by Sylvia Beach) and certain publishing ventures. She also helped provide funds to purchase a flat in Paris for struggling artist Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven.
H.D. (1886–1961) was born Hilda Doolittle in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. She was the daughter of a professor of astronomy and a musically-inclined mother. While still a school-girl she met Ezra Pound, who encouraged her writing and, in 1913, proposed that she adopt the pseudonym H.D. as a pseudonym under which to publish her first poems in Poetry Magazine. At the same time as the problematic relationship with Pound (they were twice engaged) H.D. was carrying on a love affair with a Pennsylvania woman art student, Frances Josepha Gregg. In 1919 H.D. had a daughter, Perdita, by the Scottish composer and music critic Cecil Gray (1895–1951). It was while she was pregnant that she formed an alliance with Bryher which was to last until H.D.’s death in 1961. The relationship was an open one, with both taking other partners. In 1921 Bryher entered into a marriage of convenience with the American author Robert McAlmon, whom she divorced in 1927. In 1928, H.D. became pregnant by Kenneth Macpherson, but the pregnancy was terminated later the same year. The complexities of H.D.'s relationships led her to consult the pioneer sexologist Havelock Ellis and to develop a deep interest in psychoanalysis: in the 1930s, she was to be analyzed by Freud, and her interest deeply marked her poems and other writings.
In 1927, Bryher married Kenneth Macpherson, a writer who shared her interest in film and who was at the same time H.D.'s lover. Macpherson, was a young Scottish painter with a passion for film. H.D. seems to have fallen in love with him though Macpherson was evidently exclusively homosexual. In Burier, Switzerland, overlooking Lake Geneva, the couple, along with Doolittle, built a Bauhaus-style structure that doubled as a home and film studio, which they named Kenwin. Bryher and Macpherson also formally adopted H.D.'s young daughter, Perdita, whose name they officially registered as Frances Perdita Macpherson.
Close Up was the Pool Group's main literary output, in the form of a monthly journal. The first issue of Close Up appeared in July 1927, with Macpherson as editor, Bryher as assistant editor, and H.D. and Oswell Blakeston as regular contributors.
The first issue announced that next month’s contributors would be Osbert Sitwell, Havelock Ellis, André Gide, Dorothy Richardson and Doolittle. As symbol of the group’s aims, this was explained in their 1929 catalog of publications:
. . . The expanding ripples from a stone dropped in a pool have become more a symbol for the growth of an idea than a simple matter of hydraulics.. .As the stone will cause a spread of ripples to the water's edge, so ideas once started will go to their unknown boundary. . . . These concentric expansions are exemplified in POOL, which is the source simply - the stone - the idea. POOL is seeking to express new trends and new will. Not, as we have said before, to grind any axe, but to make a centre for new ideas and modern thought.