大象传媒

Across ten programmes and ten Philip Larkin poems, Simon Armitage, the Poet Laureate, finds out what happens when he revisits and unpicks Larkin's work in his centenary year.

Episode four:
Simon Armitage explores Philip Larkin's poem Toads Revisited.

Larkin's image of the toad as a metaphor for the burden of work appears in his poem Toads - but in Toads Revisited the 'toad work' becomes a kind of crutch, helping the poet 'down Cemetery Road'. Does the image of the 'toad' still work for us today, as Larkin intended?

Producer: Faith Lawrence
Mixed by: Sue Stonestreet