Context Duffy and Larkin

• Pluto

  1930 discovered 1992 demoted

  Pluto was considered the most distant ‘planet’ from the Sun at the time. Duffy links this isolation and distance to explain how the persona feels isolated and distant when in old age. The distance between childhood and old age mimics the distance - neither will ever get any closer. Knowledge seems to be able to remove Pluto’s existence as a planet, in the same way the person’s identity is taken away from him/her by time. The hope and possibility personified by the ‘new planet’ of Pluto is replaced with the disappointment and inevitability of ageing.
• Essential Beauty

  The 1960s saw an explosion of advertising. Every saleable product

  adopted the techniques of the fast-growing advertising industry. Larkin particularly scathing as the companies are targeting those who cannot afford these items, fashion. Post war Britain saw an acceleration of advertising. Larkin experienced austerity of the 1940s and 1950s, sees the change to consumerism as decay (materially satisfied but morally bankrupt). The economic system has a coarsening and tyrannical effect as it profits from human weakness, our desperation to clutch at any diversion from death.
• Afternoons

  The 1960s decline in the Imperial power of Britain. Larkin didn't like: the erosion of English tradition, declining power of Britain. Ominous or unsettling overtones in ordinary situations, lifelong bachelor, skeptical of marriage, child-rearing; "This Be the Verse,". Families in the poem live in a council estate: public housing complex common in Britain from the 1920s. Comfortable, well-kept residential environment: nice place for families to put down roots. "husbands in skilled trades" - secure, decently paying jobs, a reflection of their country's mid-century prosperity. 
• The Captain


  Seems to dislike the decline of power. ‘Churchill Way’ and ‘Nelson Drive’ are streets named after British Imperial heroes. Both fought foreign powers for Britain. Pop songs of the 1960s were presenting an idealised image of success. This may contrast the difficulty in the persona achieving similar success and leads to his disillusionment.The changing nature of education may reflect the changing nature of British imperial power perceived by the persona; went from mostly grammar and independent to comps. The persona is promised success, thatcherist
• Litany


  Duffy refers to the materialistic attitudes of adults in the 1960s with the list of objects that replace the usual religious litany. The emerging consumerism created a glamour around material items. The women seen in the poem are showing their class stature through the objects they purchase, tupperware party. The adults were a product of a far more conservative upbringing of the 1940s and 1950s. As a result, the shock of coarse language and the refusal to talk about controversial topics is at odds with the emerging freedoms and more liberal attitudes of the younger generation.
• Oslo


  Gambling in Norway was illegal for the most part (80s-90s). The thrill of possible losing money is heightened with the thrill of possibly being caught in an illegal casino. Carol Ann Duffy wrote a pamphlet called ‘A Woman’s Guided to Gambling’ which reflects her own interest in betting.

  The feelings of dislocation felt by the persona may also be founded in Duffy’s sense of dislocation being moved from Scotland to Staffordshire when she was six years old.
• Talking in Bed


  Like many of his other well-known poems, "Talking in Bed" takes a skeptical or pessimistic attitude toward love and domesticity. Prosperity returned to the country during the 1950s and 1960s, however, and Larkin wrote "Talking In Bed" during these boom years. Against a cultural background of relative optimism about home and family, Larkin's poetry paints a darker picture of domestic life, informed in part by his troubled relationship with his own parents.
• An Arundel Tomb 


  The poem was inspired by a visit Larkin and Monica Jones paid to

  Chichester Cathedral in the winter of 1955-56.

  After the poem was published, Larkin discovered that the linked hands

  were added to the monument when it was restored in the Victorian times. He did not feel that this invalidated the poem. Remarked that he indeed found the tomb “extremely affecting.” But he also scribbled, at the bottom of one draft, “Love isn’t stronger than death just because statues hold hands for 600 years”
• Dockery and Son


  The poem was inspired by Larkin’s visit of his old Oxford College in

  Oxford, 1962. He was on his way back to Hull. This may have made Larkin

  realise how different his life seems to be compared to his peers and then the realisation that it does not matter. Larkin consciously did not want children. The persona seems jealous that Dockery was able to make such a big decision but then tries to deride the decision. The persona then decides Dockery was wrong, that ‘adding to’ does not mean to ‘increase’, aligning the persona with Larkin’s personal feelings.
• Mean Time


  Carol Ann Duffy's "Mean Time" was published in her prize-winning 1993 collection of the same name, which touches on themes of childhood, memory, love, and the passage of time. The title has multiple meanings: it refers to Greenwich Mean Time, the time zone used in Britain; it evokes the phrase "in the meantime"; and it suggests that time itself is "mean," cruelly marching forward.

  Duffy's poetry is known for being straightforward yet effective, accessible yet insightful. Her background in studying Philosophy may have influenced the common idea of time throughout her collection.
• Like earning a living

  In 1988, the National Curriculum was imposed upon teachers, a move

  many believe limited the powers of the teacher to teach. On top of this, the 1980s saw lack of funding. The teaching profession’s

  moral was very low and the teacher in this poem can be seen to embody these feelings of disillusionment. Instead, funding for education was cut. ‘Major Balls’ may also refer to the children making a ‘balls up’ of their education or the government making these mistakes. The children may be more preoccupied with the gossip

  around John Major at the time.
• The mixture of the male and female identities in the first stanza can be seen as confusion between the mother and father. Cards - The mixing of the clichés may replicate this, as well as a child is dealt a mixed hand at birth. One sided conversation. Influence of American television, development in 1980s. Lesbian poet = does not conform
• First Love


  Duffy’s poem ‘First Love’ - John Clare’s poem ‘First Love’ written in 1841. Poem seems to dialogue with Clare’s. Clare’s poem talks of the memory of his love causing pain as it is a reminder that the love he feels will never be as strong as his first reminder that this love has now ended is a source of pain.’ Describes the nullifying of his feelings as losing his ‘eyesight’ so suggests absence of the love has caused love to be tainted forever. makes use of flower imagery to show how the beauty of the first love. dark imagery. These ideas are commented upon in Duffy's poem.
• Broadcast


  Maeve Brennan was the woman he thought he could marry. They were spiritual equals, and he even once told her that Whitsun weddings was her book. But caution, fear of failure, the inevitable

  loss of his precious writing time and the memory of his unhappy marriage, stopped him. she worked at Hull city library, where she created a music library. Music was one of her abiding interests Larkin poem, Broadcast, describes the poet listening to a live transmission of a symphony concert from Hull's City Hall where Maeve sitting in the audience.
• Valentine


  The 1980s saw an increase in the commercialisation of Valentine’s day.

  Companies targeted advertisements to increase sales and a wider range of

  products designed specifically for Valentine’s day became available. Duffy

  seems to reject the seemingly meaningless declarations of love in favour of a

  more honest declaration. She rejects the commercial goods in favour of an

  honest, if admittedly flawed, depiction of a relationship.
• Home is so sad


  Larkin is said to have penned the poem on New Year’s Eve 1958 after a

  visit to his mother’s house in Loughborough for the holidays.

  ● Larkin’s childhood home survived the Luftwaffe Coventry Blitz of World

  War Two. razed to the ground in the 1960s for a new ring

  road around Coventry. Larkin could be commenting that even something

  that seems structurally sound and static is also eroded and abandoned.

  Larkin’s

  decision not to marry may be relevant here as he shows the debris of

  marriage.
• Never Go Back


  Critics and readers often interpret this poem to be set during the 1980s a period of economic crisis at the time of Margaret Thatcher - North South Divide , run down Northern cities and towns.

  Mersey poets 1960s - accessible and relatable

  Failed relationships
• Sunny Prestatyn 


  The 1960s saw an explosion of advertising. Every saleable product

  adopted the techniques of the fast-growing advertising industry.

  Advertising pressured consumers to discard their goods with increasing

  frequency on the grounds that those goods were obsolete or out of

  fashion. Larkin shows the way advertising was trying to manipulate people into spending more money.

  More openly sexual material

  Middle ages in the 1960s - reflecting on youth culture
• Ambulances


  1960s saw the development; more room in the back and bigger engines

  Saw the effects that his fathers death had on his mother