Hello and welcome to Frank Skinner's Poetry Podcast.

Let me tell you a story about myself.

Seven or eight years ago, my partner became pregnant and she was slightly alarmed as well as excited

because you know the whole thing with having children is that you have to give up a lot of stuff your life changes forever

etc etc and

and I tried to be supportive and to help us through those fears and anxieties and she came through

and then it became essentially a whole positive looking forward thing for her but then that left a bit of shelf space for my own doubts and

fears and so I had a bit of that and I remember I'm in a panic attack one day and thinking to myself that's it now I'm going to be a

parent all my time will be gone I will never be able to read Philip Larkin's Witson

Weddings again and for some reason everything that I would lose, the whole cultural world that I would lose, the whole

intellectual world that I felt I would lose, was encapsulated in that single slim volume of poetry by Philip Larkin.

So I thought I'd talk about that today, that book of poetry. it obviously means a great deal to me I love Larkin I think

I think Larkin is probably one of the great poets of all no I think he is one of the great poets of all, no I think he is one of the great poets of all time,

for me for my own particular tastes. I'm not a fan of biography when it comes to thinking about poetry. you know when people say oh she was having a

terrible time when she wrote this and so it means blah blah but I'll be straight. I do enjoy the fact that Larkin was a bald

the spectacle librarian in bicycle clips who wrote amazing poetry with amazing ideas and those ideas brilliantly expressed.

I suppose it's about a lot of people now talk about representation that you know

women want to see more women in strong positive roles people of color likewise

etc etc and I sort of feel represented by a weedy

on attractive grumpy bloke who seems to have a sparkling in a life. That gives me hope. I'd like to, I can only talk about a few of these poems, of course.

The book's 46 pages. I don't know if there is a 46 pages that contains more wisdom and more

beauty and more fabulously interesting stuff than the wits and weddings by Philip Larkin.

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