A nice programme this evening on Larkin's photography, Through the Lens of Larkin, BBC4, included many previously unseen photographs from the archive of 5000 pictures, many of which were in The Importance of Elsewhere published in 2015.
But, more riveting than even the photos was the reading of An Arundel Tomb at the end, a poem that continues to provide difficulties for Larkin scholars.
Time has transformed them into
Untruth,
it said.
I went to my several books with that poem in and all of them provided what I had expected, 'transfigured', which is not only better but also fits the eight-syllable line.
Being a programme about photographs rather than poems, though, it did not explain where this new reading has come from.
Or did they just get it wrong.
David Green
- David Green (Books) is the imprint under which I publish booklets of my own poems, or did. The 'Collected Poems' are now available as a pdf. The website is now what it has become. It keeps me out of more trouble than it gets me into. I hope you find at least some of it worthwhile.
