Craig Raine poem prompts Twitterstorm

Seventy-year-old poet’s Gatwick, fantasising about a young airport worker, unleashes stream of parodies

The poet Craig Raine is no stranger to the sexually risqué - his very first collection, The Onion, Memory, famously quoted the morning-after fantasy of the lascivious butler who Henry Green said had inspired his novel Loving. The borrowed line, in Raine’s poem Bed & Breakfast, involved smelly fingers and buttered toast, and - combined with the image “five pink farrow suckle at each foot” - prompted reviewer Gavin Ewart to reflect: “When the Metaphysicals went too far, weren’t they a bit like this?”

But Bed & Breakfast was published in the days before Twitter, where Raine’s latest poem, printed in this week’s issue of the LRB, has unleashed a stream of parodies and seen him trending alongside Andy Coulson and Rafael Benitez.

That Craig Raine poem in precis: I perved over a young woman, but it's not filthy because I kept it to myself. But then I published it.

Ode to Craig Raine: pic.twitter.com/Zc72pWA17S

In the room the women come and go. Talking of Mr Craig Raine-O. (I'm a famous heterosexual man, you know.)

That dramatic pause - In your poems Is there to make us think You're deep But we both know You're really not

sext: babe I promise I won't craig raine on your parade

'Craig Raine, the poet?' We have less than half a minute. 'I studied you. For my MA at uni. I did an MA in misogyny and the male gaze.'

POEM I agree with Craig Raine: Fancying someone at the airport and not being able to snog them is a pain. Also: high risk of delayed plane.