He was the best-known poet in the English-speaking world after the war. But his work still gets lost in his reputation.
Category: poetry
How to Wash a Heart
This year’s TS Eliot prize-winner, How to Wash a Heart, explores the relationships between guests and hosts, of belonging and not belonging.
Larkin the poet
Philip Larkin’s strengths as a poet were over-shadowed after his death by his biography and his letters. In Somewhere Becoming Rain, Clive James reminds us about Larkin’s verse.
Get out as quickly as you can
The opening to Philip Larkin’s poem ‘This Be The Verse’ is the most famous f-word in English poetry. It can survive parodies and remixing.
Mistypings and misreadings
A poem can be improved by a mistake: W.H.Auden and Sheenagh Pugh.
Christmas Eve
The blog posts from the poet, Helen Mort, which I follow, are always a pleasure to read. Her final post … More
Voskhod over Edinburgh
When I was seven, my father took my brother and I out onto the street outside our house to see … More
Dying together
For all the small spliters of optimism from the Paris COP-21 talks (and symbols and rhetoric do matter), the whole … More
A little bit of butter for my bread
A few weeks ago, a chore landed on my desk. It had started somewhere near the top of the company, … More
Limestone country
The phrase in the guidebook, and the sudden change to the bleaker limestone landscape, reminded me of Auden’s early poems, strongly inflluenced by the former lead-mining area he would walk in in the Pennines.
Around the edges 