[Rory Waterman]

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.

[Joe Crocker]

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.

[Rory Waterman]

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.

[Max Goodman]

Originally Posted by Rory Waterman

parapoems (Gavin Ewart's term for poems that follow the form and trajectory of another, but without parodic intent).

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?

[Chris O'Carroll]

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/

[Joe Crocker]

Ha ha ha harsh!

[Rory Waterman]

Originally Posted by Max Goodman

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?

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.