The Coursework Option

I want to get onto our final text, Tony Harrison's 'V' at the end of this week/beginning of next week. This week is about finishing off the Larkin work. We need to produce a piece of coursework.

REMEMBER! Both pieces of coursework need to total 1500 words, so this piece needs to be 1500 minus whatever your first piece was. So not very long.

The Coursework Option

1. Write a section of biography; relate what you find in the poems to what you find in the work. Focus on a specific element i.e. Larkin and Women, or Larkin and Politics. Look at more biographical info on Larkin here and here:

http://www.channel4.com/culture/microsites/L/larkin/

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18715

You can use all of the notes on this blog to help you, you should use the notes. Also, consider these questions:

• Is an author's biography important when we are trying to make sense of a work?
• Is Larkin's biography essential to our understanding his work?
• Are the views and attitudes presented by the poet in life more important than what appears in the poetry?

If you finish, you can do this task aswell, to give yourself another option:
Write a letter to Larkin, giving him advice. Choose one of the poems or one of the themes to focus on. Give him advice about:

• Women
• Being happy
• His attitude
• That you admire him
• That you pity him
• How you feel about him
• Or anything else you feel like writing, as long as i has a point of reference