My favourite poet, Philip Larkin, born 9 August 1922, was a writer whose poetic output is distinguished by what former Poet Laureate Andrew Motion described as "a very English, glum accuracy" about emotions, places, and relationships.”
Eventually, in 2017, a long-overdue floor-stone memorial to him was unveiled at Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.
In a 2003 Poetry Book Society survey, almost two decades after his death, Larkin was named Britain's best-loved poet of the previous 50 years, and in 2008 The Times referred to him as Britain's greatest post-war writer.
It’s difficult to decide which Larkin poem is my favourite because there are so many to choose from. Aubade comes close, as do An Arundel Tomb and MCMXIV, but the one that tends to stick in people’s memory is This Be The Verse with its unforgettable opening line.
Here it is, along with my own poem, This Be The Other Verse, a light-hearted homage to Philip Larkin.
THIS BE THE VERSE
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
&
They carve in stone, engravers do,
Your name with start and finish dates
Then hand it to some cleric who
Abuses boys and masturbates,
Who then invites a bunch of craps
Up to the Abbey in best suits,
For lengthy speeches and back slaps,
Daft eulogies and organ toots.
It fucks you up, this being dead:
But I was fucked up long before.
I left behind so much unsaid
And, still unwritten, poems galore.
But now, turns up a stone that’s like
A library book long overdue.
I sit on my celestial bike
And, gazing down, applaud the view.
Where do I post my like? Seriously a very Larkinesque poem which he would have read glumly as the only way he knew to be
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