Adrian Mitchell parody of Larkin
 

This post has turned into something of an essay. Sorry. My question is in bold at the end.

Philip Larkin’s “This be the verse” is a poem that countless teenagers have committed to memory because it speaks of parents who don’t understand them, because it allows them to say “fuck” and because it’s a great poem. But as we get older and have our own kids it seems a bit one-sided, ignoring the hopeful and heart-warming friction in family life. Sometime in the late ‘90s I was inspired to compose a counterargument to Larkin, quite unaware that many other better poets were doing the same thing. Later on an online poetry site (whose name I can’t remember and is probably now defunct) I came across a version attributed to Adrian Mitchell. I think it went like this

They tuck you up, your mum and dad,
They read you Peter Rabbit, too.
They give you all the treats they had
And add some extra, just for you.

They were tucked up when they were small,
(Pink perfume, blue tobacco-smoke),
By those whose kiss healed any fall,
Whose laughter doubled any joke.

Man hands on happiness to man,
It shines out like a sweetshop shelf
So love your parents all you can
And have some cheerful kids yourself.

A typically life-affirming Adrian Mitchell poem. The line that really sang to me was “It shines out like a sweetshop shelf” and when I compared his version with my own, I understood why he was a poet and I was pretending.

But…

I recently bought an Adrian Mitchell anthology ("Come On Everybody", Bloodaxe 2012) and the line I love isn’t there. The final verse simply has the original Larkin line “It deepens like a coastal shelf”. It feels to me that the sweetshop line serves Mitchell’s message much better and is the sort of thing I think he would write.

I searched for the sweetshop line on Google and it led me here to the Eratosphere site. Longtime Eratosphere member John Whitworth reproduced a similar example containing the line and attributed it to Mitchell. However, he acknowledged that his version was from memory and he had written his own parody (published in Poetry Review), as had the poet Simon Rae. I have tracked down several “This be the verse” parodies but haven’t found those ones. I sent John a personal message yesterday, not realising that he died recently. I contacted Bloodaxe to ask if they had any ideas and Neil Astley suggested that it may be an earlier draft or perhaps it was an impromptu revision typical of Mitchell's live performances

So my question is: where does the Sweetshop line come from? I sort of hope it is by Adrian Mitchell, but might it be from John Whitworth, Simon Rae or someone else. Or is my version a garbled mix of several parodies?

My thanks in advance to anyone willing to help.

Hi Joe,

I’m impressed by the extent of your sleuthing already, though I can’t help you I’m afraid. I remember reading that thread, though it predates my time here.

But anyway, I love Larkin and the poem and the parody is fun. Poor old John.

Welcome to The Sphere and good luck!

I checked all of John's later books and couldn't find any parodies of this poem (in case John had accidentally transposed one of his own lines into the Mitchell), but I was sure he wrote one. Perhaps it is in one of his earlier books, although these generally don't have those sorts of parodies. I can check if you want.

There was a Speccie comp called "This Be the Reverse" asking to send in refutations of the Larkin. The sub-forum that posts the weekly Speccie is hidden to non-users but I think you can log in with the password if you ask one of the mods. Search "2730" and you will find the two related threads, though none of them have the line.

One guess is that the Speccie ran this competition previously, where Mitchell won and so where John read it. The line was subsequently changed in book publication. Then again, it could be that Lucy Vickery read the Mitchell somewhere first and then based the weekly comp around it.

Here's a post of John's dated April 24th 2008.

Philip, my own little squib is buried in the back numbers of Poetry eview up in my loft. It was a competition (they did competitions in those days) and I won some poetry books. Angela Brazil came in somewhere. As for 'They tuck you up' I haven't got Simon's poem but here's Adrian Mitchell's, a doughty rhymer though his politics are dodgy according to me.

They tuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to but they do.
They give you all the quilts they have
And add some pillows just for you.

But they were tucked up in their turn
By other dads and other mums
Who sometimes took them to the beach
And sometimes helped them with their sums

Man hands on happiness to man.
It shines out like a sweetshop shelf.
So love your parents all you can
And have some cheerful kids yourself.

I cheated. I can't find Mitchell's middle stanza so I put in what I thought he might have written.

Thanks for your endeavours. As Ann Drysdale notes, the parody written by John Whitworth lies "buried in back numbers of Poetry Review up in my loft" and was a competition winner. So if anyone has easy access to old volumes it might be findable.

Interesting speculation that it may have appeared in a Spectator competition. Interesting because I think the very first "This Be The Verse" parody also appeared in The Spectator in 1991 by Richard Kell. And much more recently, last year, there was a similarly motivated, identically titled but not quite as good version in an article by James Tooley

I haven't yet managed to find the Lucy Vickery competition winners, but will persevere

Ok Orwn. I found the Spectator competition. And John Whitworth was given an honourable mention. There were some very clever entries, and if I'd known about it, I might have entered too.

Here (Drills and amusements section, parodies thread, post 57 Parodies of Larkin's "This be the verse"), for the sake of completeness is my reaction circa 1997. Never published, but I do trot it out on special occasions.



But if anyone can trace the Sweetshop line, I would still love to find out
.

I thought I did. See post #4.

Hi Ann. Yes I realise that John Whitworth used the sweetshop line in his post back in 2008. However, he attributed it to Adrian Mitchell and the published version of Adrian Mitchell's "This be the worst" does not contain this line. (The first and middle verses also differ) My memory is that I saw the sweetshop version on a website that predates the Whitworth post, probably in the early noughties, but I can no longer find it. So I was wondering who originated it. If John Whitworth didn't write it. who did? Was it an early draft by Mitchell or a later improv. Or was it by someone else?

Hi Joe, and welcome to the Sphere.

So, I had a quick Google. Here's a version of Mitchell's poem with the sweetshop line that was posted on an online forum in May 2006, 2 years prior to John's post; you can find it toward the bottom of this page:

http://vancouverjazz.com/forums/arch...hp/t-1643.html

Is that the one?

best,

Matt

Thanks Matt, that is the version of the poem I had in my head and it is the earliest version with a date. But it still attributes the poem to Adrian Mitchell, whereas all the published versions (in All Shook Up, Bloodaxe 2000, and Come on everybody, 2012) do not have the sweetshop line. So where did the poster in your 2006 link find that version? :confused:

You could try joining the forum and PMing the poster. He hasn't been active in years, but that doesn't mean he won't see it.

Likewise the person who posted the poem with the sweetshop line here in 2009:

https://forum.fellrunner.org.uk/show...y-s-poet/page2

Though he may have got it from 2006 post, I guess.

One of his weaker poems, and a self-parody.
A parody of Aubade would be worth reading.

His name is Colin Lazzerini; he's a jazz singer. He has a Facebook page. There's an email address for him on the bottom of this page.

And if you find out where he got it from, let me know. I'm getting sucked into the mystery.

The verse, with the sweetshop line and the attribution to Adrian, also appears on MumsNet. I shall pursue - but very carefully.

https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_be...m-and-dad-quot
.

Oh, I see it less as self-parody than comic distillation of things like "I Remember I Remember" and "Dockery and Son". Though they're both pretty funny already.

Yes, I came across that one too. My guess is that it was posted by someone who'd found John Whitworth's post, as it mentions there being no middle verse, and John didn't post a middle verse.

I think I'm getting closer. I now have references to the sweetshop line in 1993 and 1996, both in the New Statesman. Both attribute the poem to Adrian Mitchell. This is interesting because as far as I'm aware the first proper published Mitchell version of the poem appears in his 2000 collection All Shook Up , Bloodaxe books. Presumably he had an early version in a pamphlet or perhaps in a magazine like New Statesman

I tracked the references down using the Google Books search engine. Frustratingly, it only gives you a small snippet of the text. But it does supply Volume, Issue and page numbers. Looks like I may have to trek off to a university library.

Unless someone here has a collection of New Statesmans going back 30 years. Or has easier access than me to a big library.

The references according to Google Books are

New Statesman - Volume 9 - Page 17 (1996)

New Statesman Society - Volume 6, Issues 234-245 - Page 23 (1993)

Still not quite got there. My nearest big library (University of York) has the volumes of old New Statesmans that I need, but has not yet re-opened to the general public.

From the Google Books search snippets, it looks like the whole poem (inc the sweetshop line) has been printed, so it may be Mitchell's first publication of the poem that was later altered. I know that Adrian Mitchell was poetry editor at NS for a few years, so he had a relationship with the magazine and it does not seem unreasonable that this was where it was first published.

For anyone still interested in my quest, I have now found a published version of Adrian Mitchell's parody of Larkin's "This be the verse" that is definitely by Adrian Mitchell, pre-dates his 2000 collection "All Shook Up" and contains my favourite "sweetshop" line. Here it is

Attachment 1035

So my question now is why did the sweetshop line get dropped in later published versions? For me, it is the best line in the poem. Which is why I remembered it all these years later. Larkin's original line "It deepens like a coastal shelf" captures the misery that man hands on to man. The coastal shelf gets deeper, darker, gloomier. But how does a coastal shelf describe happiness? Mitchell was surely right in his 1993 version that happiness shines out.


A possible explanation might be that "It shines out like a sweetshop shelf" is a little tongue-twisting like "She sells seashells on the seashore". But I suspect playful Mitchell wouldn't mind that at all. More likely, I would guess, is that he misremembered his own poem when it came to preparing "All shook up". That's a shame.


I wonder if his literary executors have any other information?

Here is yet another mention of the line, along with mention of the lore that "tuck" was originally said by a radio announcer by way of censorship.

(I did a parody of the poem as well beginning "They raised me well, my mum and dad," which was printed with the results of Speccie 3140, but I didn't mention any sweetshop. I kept "coastal shelf" since I thought, and still think, it doesn't imply gloom but simply deepening.)

I asked Neil Astley of Bloodaxe books -- where Mitchell published his "This be the worst" -- whether he had any thoughts on the different versions. He was kind enough to send me the following

Dear Joe Crocker

I was interested to see where that version of the poem had been originally published. But I wouldn’t be in a position to pursue this question any further. Adrian was quite methodical when collecting poems for a new collection which had been previously published in magazines, and the versions he included in his book manuscripts were always the final versions as far as he was concerned. He did have a habit of revising poems after they had already been published in magazines or included in readings, and indeed he did “try out” poems at readings and saw that process as helping him with revisions. He also revised poems after book publication so that they sometimes appeared in slightly changed versions in later books. But he had no hand in the posthumous Come On Everybody, and in compiling that edition we had to draw upon texts of poems from their last published appearance.

Best wishes
Neil Astley

Finally putting this thread to bed. I had a phone call from Sasha Mitchell, Adrian's daughter and literary executor. She agreed with me that "It shines out like a sweetshop shelf" was a fine line, but speculated that a) as Adrian had a slight lisp, he may have found it too much of a tongue-twister to reliably perform live and b) that by keeping the original Larkin line ("It deepens like a coastal shelf") Adrian may have been emphasising that happiness as well as misery can deepen. She did say that he very often revised his poems.

I still prefer the sweetshop version though.

Thank you for the whole research undertaking, Joe. Uncertainties, mysteries, doubts -- these are a poet's friends. Nevertheless, where this tidbit of literary history is concerned, I'm grateful for your tenacious and far from irritable reaching after fact and reason.

(That "sweetshop shelf" lines really does shine -- a visual image with notes of flavor and mouth feel to engage two other senses.)

Thank you, Joe.

Earlier this summer, I wrote an essay on Larkin's parodies and parapoems (Gavin Ewart's term for poems that follow the form and trajectory of another, but without parodic intent). There are loads of versions of this; some are great, and most are frightful, obvious, etc. Case in point: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/they-tuck-you-up. If you'd spent the past 50 years in a cork-lined room, I suspect you'd think Larkin's poem was parodying it.

Thanks for your support everyone.

Rory. Yes, it was the Spectator article last year that tickled my remembering of Mitchell's parody. And it was buying an anthology of his and not finding my favourite line that set me off.

I would love to have a look at your essay if it is available or attachable.

Hi Joe. It'll be in Yearbook of English Studies for this year, but I don't know when that is out. If there's a link, I'll share it with you.

Thanks for mentioning this. I've long felt that others and we (including me) have been using "parody" for lots of poems that don't mean to parody. But did Ewart need to invent a word? Why is "pastiche" (according to Merriam Webster, "a literary, artistic, musical, or architectural work that imitates the style of previous work") do disused?

The new issue of Light is out, after a series of unfortunate delays, and some scoundrel appears to have contributed a Larkin parody in the form of a reworked Christmas carol. In this case the imitation aims to be not nicer than the original, but even nastier.

https://lightpoetrymagazine.com/chri...oll-summer-20/

Ha ha ha harsh!

Pastiche can be used quite generally, and/or pejoratively, of course: "His work is essentially a pastiche or Georgian poesy." I suppose a parapoem is a kind of pastiche - a very particular, specifically and thoroughly intertextual pastiche, without biting back at or taking the piss out of the original. Ewart wrote this, which is in the same form and of the same length as Larkin's 'The Whitsun Weddings', echoes a lot of the language of the original, etc.