Larkin and Finding Yourself In the Rubble
On the value of poetry
Larkin. A little bit racist, a little bit misogynist; hell, every bit the modern man. (These things have never gone away. The internet has revealed multitudes of intelligent people holding ignorant opinions.) But you know what, as extraordinary artists of the past go, he isn’t the worst. Caravaggio was a murderer. Eric Gill was a paedophile. Hunter S Thompson was an A-grade dangerous arsehole. George Orwell, a man revered for his vision of the future we are living through — snitched on his friends to the authorities.
I draw the line at Eric Gill, but the rest? Humans are complex, messy creatures. Great artists, some of the messiest. And Larkin pretty much has my heart forever. Very few poets have touched the essence of being human so deeply, yet so accessibly. He is a touchstone for honesty, compression and technical skill.
We did Byron and Keats at school. My English teacher introduced me …
