{"id":290,"date":"2010-07-13T09:11:14","date_gmt":"2010-07-13T09:11:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/?p=290"},"modified":"2010-07-13T09:11:14","modified_gmt":"2010-07-13T09:11:14","slug":"larkin-about-on-inspiration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/2010\/07\/13\/larkin-about-on-inspiration\/","title":{"rendered":"Larkin About: on inspiration"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s a wonderful documentary from BBC Monitor in 1964, in which the poet Philip Larkin is interviewed by John Betjeman, and they are discussing\u00a0the nature of poetic inspiration.<\/p>\n<div class=\"kent-video-wrapper\"><span class='embed-youtube' style='text-align:center; display: block;'><iframe class='youtube-player' type='text\/html' width='840' height='503' src='https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/YkuMEfv4lS0?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;fs=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;wmode=transparent' frameborder='0' allowfullscreen='true'><\/iframe><\/span><\/div>\n<p>Larkin himself states, &#8221;One doesn&#8217;t really <em>choose<\/em> the poetry that one writes.&#8221;&#8221; He reflects on some of his earlier poems, which he finds it uncomfortable to re-visit (calling it &#8221;tripe&#8221;), and says that part of the reason he no longer likes it is because &#8220;&#8221;it seemed so unreal, and without any possible references to my own life as I was living it.&#8221;&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-298\" style=\"margin-left: 5px;margin-right: 5px;border: white 5px solid\" title=\"larkin\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/files\/2010\/07\/larkin.gif\" alt=\"Philip Larkin\" width=\"166\" height=\"246\" \/>Both these ideas are crucial, I think, to understanding part of the nature of artistic inspiration:\u00a0 there is often little choice in the nature of the poem or music the artist is complled to write, and their experience is key. The composer Jonathan Harvey also picks up on this in his <em>Music and Inspiration<\/em>, where he writes that &#8220;only forms of experience that have a particular resonance for\u00a0[the artist]\u00a0will contribute to the artistic process&#8221; (1990:40).<\/p>\n<p>In other words, artistic inspiration is linked to, or perhaps grounded in, personal experience, and\u00a0the artist is at the mercy of being\u00a0inspired, without necessarily having full\u00a0control over\u00a0the birth of suitable ideas. \u00a0My own experience of the process of writing, either music or poetry, bears this out: inspiration comes directly from moments of experience,\u00a0a\u00a0phrase suddenly overheard suggesting a complete poem, or reading a poem suggesting a musical response to it. It&#8217;s almost akin to archeology: I&#8217;m not writing the work, simply unearthing what is already present.<\/p>\n<p>The writer Elizabeth Bowen\u00a0puts it brilliantly: &#8216;the poet, and in his wake the short story writer, is using his own, unique, suceptibility to experience: in a sense, the suceptibility is the experience&#8221;&#8221; (cited in <em>Philip Larkin 1922-1985: a tribute<\/em>, ed. Hartley, Marvell Press, 1988: 272). To this, I would add little other than &#8220;&#8221;and the composer.&#8221;&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0documentary is also wonderful for the chance to hear Larkin himself reading &#8216;Toad Revisited&#8217; in his dolorous tones. And as a meditation on poetic inspiration, it&#8217;s invaluable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s a wonderful documentary from BBC Monitor in 1964, in which the poet Philip Larkin is interviewed by John Betjeman, and they are discussing\u00a0the nature of poetic inspiration. Larkin himself states, &#8221;One doesn&#8217;t really choose the poetry that one writes.&#8221;&#8221; He reflects on some of his earlier poems, which he finds it uncomfortable to re-visit &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/2010\/07\/13\/larkin-about-on-inspiration\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Larkin About: on inspiration&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":620,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1201,1225],"tags":[1306,1227,25249],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/620"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":302,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290\/revisions\/302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}