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Amongst the 20th century's most significant English-language poets, Philip Larkin (1922-1985) is often regarded as one of literature’s great pessimists, a writer who described postwar Britain and the mores of modernity with a gloomy cynicism bordering on the fanatical. Dismissive of notions of god and religion, drawn to failures of human communication, he is a figure reluctantly moored to the meaninglessness of the quotidian. And yet, from such positions of despair, his poetry often reaches for the divine: he is also a soul in search of something beyond the seen, whose best poems reach for the numinous, celebrating moments of mystery and encounters with “unfenced existence”. In a week of essays marking his centenary year, five contemporary poets each take a short poem by Larkin as the starting point for an exploration of their own attitudes to faith, belief and the spiritual. To begin the series, the London-born poet Raymond Antrobus responds to Larkin’s 'The Mower' with an essay on kindness, care and moments of epiphany. Weaving together accounts of his grandfather’s church sermons with reflections on the poetic craft, Antrobus considers how the certainty of his own atheism has shifted as he entered his thirties. Writer and reader: Raymond Antrobus Producer: Phil Smith A Far Shoreline production for BBC Radio 3