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Howard Sergeant (1914 - 1987)

Herbert (‘Howard’) Sergeant was born in Hull and qualified as an accountant. He served in the RAF and the Air Ministry during the Second World War and with the assistance of his friend Lionel Monteith, edited and published the first issue of his poetry magazine Outposts in February 1944. Outposts is the longest running independent poetry magazine in Britain and over the decades, has specialised in publishing unrecognised poets alongside the well established. Sergeant had been writing poetry since childhood and his first poem to be published was ‘Thistledown magic’, in Chambers Journal in 1943. Sergeant’s own poetry was included in the first issue of Outposts (but rarely thereafter) and his first published collection, The leavening air, appeared in 1946. He was involved in setting up the Dulwich Group (a branch of the British Poetry Association) in 1949, and again, when it re-formed in 1960.