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.
Last edited by Orwn Acra; 09-05-2020 at 09:35 AM.
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