11th May 2008 - Revealingly yours, Philip Larkin
Postcards dug from the bottom of a box have given one Oxford librarian tantalising insights into the poet’s work
In late July 1982, Philip Larkin wrote one of his last poems, Long Lion Days. From most drying nibs, 10 seasonal lines in rhyming couplets would plod to obscurity. This poet signs off with an unending summer bounding into elemental realms of fire: “Whatever conceived Now fully leaved, Abounding, ablaze - O long lion days!” How do such poems come about? What is their inspiration? In our hypertextual age of cut and paste, surf and spin, we’re not supposed to ask unfashionable questions about the genesis of literary works. Yet we still want to track back to authorial origin: to drink long from Keats’s heady beaker full of the warm south, to feel the heat of the furnace in which Blake forged his immortal tiger.
Story continues at 
1st May 2008
May's Poem of the month added, Click Here for more ê
19th April 2008
Copy dealine for About Larkin No. 26 is 31 August 2008
Click here for more about copy submissions ê
1st April 2008
April's Poem of the month added, Click Here for more ê
