John Carey: ‘In my teens I fancied myself as a poet’

The outspoken critic on his new history of poetry, the relevance of authors’ private lives, and why he won’t be going to see the latest film version of Emma

The critic John Carey, 85, is emeritus Merton professor of English literature at Oxford University, where he taught for more than 40 years. He has written books about John Milton and John Donne as well as polemics against elitism in culture including What Good Are the Arts? (2005) His memoir The Unexpected Professor was an unexpected bestseller. His new book is A Little History of Poetry.

I imagine you’ve read just about everything, but were there poets you read for the first time for this book?
Oh yeah. Quite a lot. There were several I had meant to read and never got around to. Petrarch for example – though I have to say that he was a major disappointment. Also, I hadn’t read Pushkin, or Goethe really. Rilke, the German poet, I had just about touched on, I thought was wonderful. Baffling, but wonderful.

No teacher said anything at school that made me want to learn what they knew about, but poetry I found to be incredibly supportive

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