Philip Larkin
Philip Larkin
Philip Arthur Larkin CH CBE FRSLwas an English poet, novelist and librarian. His first book of poetry, The North Ship, was published in 1945, followed by two novels, Jilland A Girl in Winter, and he came to prominence in 1955 with the publication of his second collection of poems, The Less Deceived, followed by The Whitsun Weddingsand High Windows. He contributed to The Daily Telegraph as its jazz critic from 1961 to 1971, articles gathered in All What Jazz: A...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth9 August 1922
writing sleep organization
I can't understand these chaps who go round American universities explaining how they write poems: It's like going round explaining how you sleep with your wife.
children growing-up simple
Above all, though, children are linked to adults by the simple fact that they are in process of turning into them. For this they may be forgiven much. Children are bound to be inferior to adults, or there is no incentive to grow up.
home existence elsewhere
Here no elsewhere underwrites my existence.
kids men hands
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.
love dream hands
I wonder love can have already set In dreams, when we've not met More times than I can number on one hand.
believe guiding-principles people
As a guiding principle I believe that every poem must be its own sole freshly created universe, and therefore have no belief n 'tradition' or a common myth-kitty or casual allusions in poems to other poems or poets, which last I find unpleasantly like the talk of literary understrappers letting you see they know the right people.
home winning lasts
Home is so sad. It stays as it was left, / Shaped to the comfort of the last to go / As if to win them back
dream book finals
Only in books the flat and final happens, Only in dreams we meet and interlock....
book food eye
I like spaghetti because you don't have to take your eyes off the book to pick about among it, it's all the same.
believe add phrases
I'm terrified of the thought of time passing (or whatever is meant by that phrase) whether I 'do' anything or not. In a way I may believe, deep down, that doing nothing acts as a brake on 'time's - it doesn't of course. It merely adds the torment of having done nothing, when the time comes when it really doesn't matter if you've done anything or not.
Here is an unfenced existance
I have wished you something None of the others would....
A good poem about failure is a success.