Larry Beckett (born April 4, 1947) is an American poet, playwright, songwriter, musician, translator, and literary critic. As a songwriter and music arranger, Beckett collaborated with Tim Buckley in the late 1960s and early 1970s on several songs and albums, including the critically acclaimed "Song to the Siren" which has been recorded by many artists, from This Mortal Coil to Robert Plant to George Michael to Kitty Macfarlane and Jann Klose. He has also collaborated with British group The Long Lost Band, and local Portland indie band Eyelids.

Beckett has had several books of poetry published including Songs and Sonnets, his selected songs in Song to the Siren, and a few book-length poems entitled Paul Bunyan, Wyatt Earp, and Amelia Earhart. American Cycle, a 47-year project, was published in April 2021 by Running Wild Press.

Beckett was born in Glendale, California, and lived in Los Angeles, Downey, and Anaheim, where his father was an English and speech teacher and his mother worked in the career counseling industry. The Becketts moved around for the first decade of Larry Beckett's life, first to Ashland, Oregon, then back down south to Downey, California and eventually settling in nearby Anaheim when Larry was 10 years old. Larry Beckett attended Loara High School where he developed a passion for writing and poetry. A high school English teacher helped change his mind from thinking he wanted to be a mathematical physicist, to realizing he was a writer. Also while in high school Larry Beckett befriended classmates Tim Buckley and Jim Fielder, a relationship that would launch Beckett into music songwriting.

Beckett read two of his 1966 poems, Found at the Scene of a Rendezvous that Failed, and Birth Day, on the Rhino Handmade reissue of the album Tim Buckley, to which he contributed liner notes, including the lyric “1, 2, 3.” He recited Song to the Siren and an essay on its composition on the MVDvisual DVD Tim Buckley: My Fleeting House.

In December 2021, Beckett was interviewed on a BBC Radio 4 episode of Soul Music, explaining the origins of his poem, "Song to the Siren", and how his collaboration with Buckley evolved as he developed the musical setting for the song. The same episode includes extended readings, by Beckett, along with reflections on the song by various artists who have interpreted it, including musician and singer Dominic Stichbury and singer Rose Betts.

Beckett's lyrics and poems were published in Songs and Sonnets, 2002, by Rainy Day Women Press. His selected song lyrics were published in Song to the Siren, 2024, by Halbaffe Press.

Beat Poetry, with twelve central San Francisco renaissance poems and Beckett’s essays on them reconsidered as literature, was published in 2012. The Jack Kerouac chapter was reprinted in the 2019 anthology Kerouac on Record: A Literary Soundtrack, edited by Simon Warner and Jim Sampas.

For 47 years, Beckett worked on American Cycle, a series of long poems: U. S. Rivers: Highway 1, Old California, Paul Bunyan, John Henry (folklore), Chief Joseph, Wyatt Earp, P. T. Barnum, Amelia Earhart, Blue Ridge, U. S. Rivers: Route 66. The Cycle's themes are love, local mythology, history, justice, memory, accomplishment, time. Paul Bunyan, Wyatt Earp, and Amelia Earhart were published as individual volumes, Paul Bunyan with a recording of a performance. The complete American Cycle was published in 2021.