By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Going’, originally titled ‘Dying Day’, is one of Philip Larkin’s earliest mature poems, written in 1946 and published in his 1955 volume The Less Deceived. At once plain-spoken and strangely elusive, ‘Going’ is a lyric about one of the most common themes of Larkin’s poetry: death. You can read ‘Going’ here; below is our analysis of it.