September 2014 Nomination: As Bad As a Mile [9 February 1960. From The Whitsun Weddings] In the aftermath of the 2014 World Cup, sports journalist Barney Ronay in his Monday Guardian column cited [...]

August 2014 Nomination: Born Yesterday [20 January 1954. From The Less Deceived] Tightly-folded bud this poem is, with its riveting three-beat line recalling Robert Graves’ “Counting the Beats.” [...]

July 2014 Nomination: The Mower [12 June 1979 Hull Literary Club magazine, (Autumn 1979)] In his brilliant 2008 book Larkin, Ideology and Critical Violence, John Osborne notes that ‘Ignorance’ is [...]

June 2014 Nomination: Bridge for the Living [December 1975. Poetry Book Society Supplement, (Christmas 1981)] In Chapter 7 of his most recent monograph, Radical Larkin: Seven Types of Technical [...]

May 2014 Nomination: Aubade [29 November 1977 Times Literary Supplement, (23 December 1977)] ‘Aubade’ is a poem that makes me happy. No line in the poem is happy. None of the poem’s thoughts are [...]

April 2014 Nomination: An Arundel Tomb [20 February 1956. From The Whitsun Weddings] My choice of ‘Poem of the Month’ wavered for a while between Philip Larkin’s ‘Church Going’ and his ‘An [...]

March 2014 Nomination: This Be The Verse [? April 1971] They fuck you up your mum and dad … has always struck me as a fantastic opening line for a poem. It’s there in your face from the very [...]

February 2014 Nomination: MCMXIV [17 May 1960. The Whitsun Weddings] I’d like to nominate and comment on ‘MCMXIV’. When Larkin was deciding the title for this wonderfully soft-focus masterpiece [...]

December 2013 Nomination: The Large Cool Store [18 June 1961] This one embodies one of the main reasons I love Larkin’s poetry – the ability to find something transcendent in humdrum everyday [...]

November 2013 Nomination: Next, Please [16 January 1951] The title although appropriate to its subject, almost does a disservice to the poem. This banal Next, Please, having associations with [...]

October 2013 Nomination: Deceptions [20 February 1950. From The Less Deceived] It is with a degree of uneasiness that one nominates ‘Deceptions’ as a ‘favourite poem’. This is, after all, a work [...]

August 2013 Nomination: Talking in Bed [10 August 1960. From The Whutsun Weddings] I admire this poem because it frames so precisely, and with poignance, the problems of “honesty” that almost [...]

July 2013 Nomination: Home is so Sad [13 December 1958. From The Whitsun Weddings] I love this poem because it captures something poignant – and true – about our homes but also points out the [...]

June 2013 Nomination: Take One Home for the Kiddies [13 August 1960. From The Whitsun Weddings] I have chosen this seemingly simple Larkin poem because it beautifully exemplifies the way I feel [...]

April 2013 Nomination: Love Again [20 September 1979. From The Complete Poems (2012)] Reviewing Anthony Thwaite’s 1988 edition of Larkin’s Collected Poems, the late, great poet and critic Ian [...]

March 2013 Nomination: Long Sight in Age [20 June 1955. From The Complete Poems (2012)] The poem, ‘Long Sight in Age’, features as part of the extensive Larkin display in the Hull and East Riding [...]

February 2013 Nomination: Love, we must part now [1943-44. From The North Ship] If I look for unlikely favourites I suppose I’d go for The North Ship simply because they are so memorable as I [...]

January 2013 Nomination: The Explosion [5 January 1970. From High Windows (1970)] Larkin is one of the masters of the English Language and I’m an unqualified reader incapable of judging him on [...]

December 2012 Nomination: Pigeons [First published in Departure January 1957] In September 1956 Philip wrote a letter to his mother which contained the following paragraph: I’m glad you heard the [...]

November 2012 Nomination: The Mower [12 June 1979. From Collected Poems (1988)] I suspect that like most Larkin aficionados of my generation, I first came across Philip Larkin’s poetry when I was [...]