Philip larkin poem about parents anniversary
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Philip Larkin
English poet, novelist and librarian (1922–1985)
For the Irish former hurler, see Phil Larkin.
Philip Arthur Larkin (9 August 1922 – 2 December 1985) was an English poet, novelist, and librarian. His first book of poetry, The North Ship, was published in 1945, followed by two novels, Jill (1946) and A Girl in Winter (1947). He came to prominence in 1955 with the publication of his second collection of poems, The Less Deceived, followed by The Whitsun Weddings (1964) and High Windows (1974). He contributed to The daglig Telegraph as its jazz critic from 1961 to 1971, with his articles gathered in All What Jazz: A Record Diary 1961–71 (1985), and edited The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse (1973).[1] His many honours include the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.[2] He was offered, but declined, the position of Poet Laureate in 1984, following the death of Sir John Betjeman.
After graduating from Oxford University inom
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Here you are talking about duck again
Of Philip Larkin’s many ostentatiously ‘less deceived’ accounts of family life, among my favourites is the soaring riff that concludes his introduction to All What Jazz (1970), a collection of mainly unimpressed reviews of John Coltrane, Miles Davis et al that initially appeared in the Telegraph. ‘Sometimes I imagine them,’ he muses of the readers of his monthly column,
sullen fleshy inarticulate men, stockbrokers, sellers of goods, living in thirty-year-old detached houses among the golf courses of Outer London, husbands of ageing and bitter wives they first seduced to Artie Shaw’s ‘Begin the Beguine’ or the Squadronaires’ ‘The Nearness of You’; fathers of cold-eyed lascivious daughters on the pill … and cannabis-smoking jeans-and-bearded Stuart-haired sons whose oriental contempt for ‘bread’ is equalled only by their insatiable demand for it&he
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You’ll hear about Philip Larkin in the coming months. It’s his anniversary. Like most people, I loved his lines:
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
There was something wild about quoting that to teachers and parents and saying: “It’s a poem, you can’t blame me.”
Larkin was a major influence, his poetry accessible, dour but witty, the outpourings of a sad man. He made me wrestle with the nature/nurture argument. He’d a difficult relationship with his parents and blamed them for his misery. I could empathise as I’d a bad relationship with my father. It took me years to realise that the behaviour of parents isn’t in our DNA, that you can nurture a road for yourself. I came to a stage where I thought Larkin should’ve been grateful for a miserable childhood as it gave him material for poetry. And then, he should have got on with it.
Unlike Larkin, I didn’t let my relationship with my father define me. It helped that I’d five sisters who were h