Okay, this has just come my way, literally a few minutes ago. Sweetshop territory: I’d never heard Larking speak before! What a gorgeous voice he had, and what humour in it. It’s delightful just to see him laugh… and Betjeman of course is National Treaure incarnate: equally wonderful. The chat in progress between them at the end is delicious. This is the first of three sections so apologies if you now find your day a little crammed…
Meanwhile, I have just found out that I have a new JOB in the pipeline! Excellent and reassuring to hear Larkin saying he thinks the whole thing about work is that it “forces you to think about something besides yourself, and your own poems,” and is “positively good for you.” Unlike looking for work in a deep recession, which certainly forces you to think about things other than your poems, but is not so good for you.
10 Comments
November 5, 2009 at 11:31 am
Was there a link to go with that?
Great news about the job!
November 5, 2009 at 11:46 am
Hi Anne, it’s in now. I don’t know what it is with WordPress, sometimes you put in the code for the link, and if you don’t press publish that very SECOND, it kind of eats itself. It can be in your text box but still won’t be on the blog. Very annoying. And not even consistent.
And the job, yes, will be working on a V Imp. Cross-Departmental Government Project, fraid I can’t say more, there will be helicopters though.
November 5, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Larkin smiles? Who knew? But seriously folks, this was fantastic. I watched all 3 parts (obviously, I’m not at work…). File it under “education/inspiration”. I also love the Monitor’s theme music. Thanks.
November 5, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Dear Katy
When I lived in Hull I used to see Philip Larkin around the place. He used to drink in The Polar Bear among other pubs. I always thought that as a poet he was slightly overrated but I admired his political incorrectness. These days, boringly, being politically correct is almost a sine qua non of becoming a published poet.
Best wishes from Simon
November 5, 2009 at 2:37 pm
The last time I saw Larkin he was introducing a reading by Andrew Motion.
He was bigger and broader than one might imagine, an overgrown Eric Morecambe. And almost excessively jolly. Motion’s poems were a bit less fun: short measures in a long cool glass.
And congratulations on your impending employment. Mrs T is likewise currently engaged on an inter-departmental government project, albeit one the importance of which is difficult to discern.
November 5, 2009 at 7:43 pm
Hurrah on the job front! And hurrah for Larkin! Well done, girl, on all counts.
November 5, 2009 at 10:59 pm
Crikey, it was before the Humber Bridge. Thank you for this! Like Sue, I listened to the whole programme. I love it when he and Betjeman are chatting and PL is smoking.
BTW, in The Large Cool Store, that’s the sort of sock display into which, in his dadaist period, Barry Humphries used to interleave rashers of bacon.
November 7, 2009 at 7:40 am
I like it when he raises his eyebrows and feels slightly taken aback as if he heard it before from his father when Betjaman says that he envies his being a librarian – something to “fall back on.” But you are welcome to your “national treasures” – Philip and Maggie and the whole damned lot.
November 7, 2009 at 9:25 am
Ah, now hang on there Bill – Thatcher is not a national treasure! Admittedly the Queen mother was, but there were reasons for that. I’m not sure Phil makes the grade either. Main ones these days, Stephen Fry, David Hockney, Alan Bennett, er…
November 10, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Thanks for that Katy. I read that interview before, and I remember Larkin’s deprecatingly agreeing with those who would scorn his work as ‘a kind of welfare-sub poetry’.
Larkin’s politics and prejudices were pretty dire of course, as outmoded as those ‘old-style hats and coats’ in his well-known ‘Verse’. But to view his poems through those scratched, clouded lenses is worse than short-sighted; it is utterly pointless and self-defeating, like annotating his junk mail.