From Oasis into Italy: war poems and diaries from Africa and Italy, 1940-1946

Victor Selwyn (1917 – 2005) was a British journalist. He was associated with the Cairo poets, and was — along with Denis Saunders and David Burk — an editor of Oasis.

The British Army presence in Egypt in World War II had, as a side effect, the concentration of a group of Cairo poets. There had in fact been a noticeable literary group in Cairo before the war in North Africa broke out, including university academics. Possibly as a reflection of that, there were two strands of literary activity and publication during the years 1942-1944. There was the Personal Landscape group centred on the publication of that name, founded by Lawrence Durrell, Robin Fedden and Bernard Spencer. There was also the Salamander group, which produced a magazine and the Oasis series of anthologies. To over-simplify, the first group produced poetic reputations, while the second, founded by servicemen, broadcast appeals and collected an archive of 17,000 poems written at the period.

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In fact poets like Terence Tiller and G. S. Fraser had a foot in both camps. Keith Douglas