martian.fm - from the north of the heart

An early draft of a poem by Philip Larkin has been discovered among papers at the University of Hull. Builders carrying out renovation works to the university's library came across the work inside a copy of the now-defunct glamour magazine Razzle. The 1971 poem, written in pencil and titled This Might Be The Verse, is thought to be the most significant addition to the Larkin canon since the sonnet Waiting For Cancer was unearthed in a pile of jazz records in the 1980s. Larkin scholars are particularly excited by the latest discovery as there was quite a lot of pornography with it, some bearing traces of Larkin's DNA.

Related stories

Macavity: The Waste Cat

Alan Ginsberg: A Performance Of "Bleat"