First publication. Philip Larkin (1922-1985) contributed a number of poems, articles, and reviews to Encounter, beginning with ‘The Whitsun Weddings’ in 1959 and ending with a review of Peter Ackroyd’s T.S. Eliot in 1984, a year before his death. These two poems – ‘Dublinesque’ (dated 6 June 1970) and ‘The Cardplayers’ (dated 6 May 1970) – were first published in this issue of Encounter and then collected four years later in Larkin’s High Windows (London, 1974), the final collection published during the poet’s lifetime. Here, the depiction of a funeral in ‘Dublinesque’ precedes the pastiche of ‘The Cardplayers’ (‘Jan van Hogspeuw staggers to the door / And pisses at the dark’), whereas the poems were printed in their order of their composition in High Windows.

Bloomfield, Philip Larkin (2002), C368.