{"id":8148,"date":"2022-08-08T15:24:40","date_gmt":"2022-08-08T15:24:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=8148"},"modified":"2022-08-08T15:34:51","modified_gmt":"2022-08-08T15:34:51","slug":"aug-8-100-years-of-larkin-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2022\/08\/08\/aug-8-100-years-of-larkin-about\/","title":{"rendered":"100 years of Larkin About"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Philip Larkin was born 100 years ago this week. \u00a0It's said that he had a difficult childhood (who didn't). \u00a0But, as Alan Bennett once remarked, poets should be grateful for tricky beginnings as it gave them something to write about.<\/p>\n<p>This poem is about beginnings and, for someone known as <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-admin\/post.php?post=8129&amp;action=edit\">being gloomy<\/a>, is positively cheerful.<\/p>\n<div class=\"poem_body\">\n<div class=\"orig_8495699\">The trees are coming into leaf<br \/>\nLike something almost being said;<br \/>\nThe recent buds relax and spread,<br \/>\nTheir greenness is a kind of grief.<\/div>\n<div class=\"orig_8495699\">Is it that they are born again<br \/>\nAnd we grow old? \u00a0No, they die too,<br \/>\nTheir yearly trick of looking new<br \/>\nIs written down in rings of grain.<\/div>\n<div class=\"orig_8495699\">Yet still the unresting castles thresh<br \/>\nIn fullgrown thickness every May.<br \/>\nLast year is dead, they seem to say,<br \/>\nBegin afresh, afresh, afresh.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>.............................................................................<\/p>\n<p>To listen to a broader perspective on Larkin, try a repeat of Roger McGough's\u00a0<em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sounds\/play\/m0019wnd\">Poetry Please<\/a>. \u00a0<\/em>It includes\u00a0<em>This be the Verse <\/em>which embodies a policy for universal population control and is one that would relieve all the pressures on the health service. \u00a0It's said that he wanted 100 girl guides to recite this at his funeral. \u00a0Sadly, they didn't.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Philip Larkin was born 100 years ago this week. \u00a0It's said that he had a difficult childhood (who didn't). \u00a0But, as Alan Bennett once remarked, poets should be grateful for tricky beginnings as it gave them something to write about....<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}