October 2012 Nomination: Money [19 February 1973. From High Windows] “Money makes the world go round”, so they say. It seems to me that whenever I turn the radio on ‘its’ usually talks about [...]

September 2012 Nomination: Aubade [29 November 1977. First published in The Times Literary Supplement 23 December 1977 I was terrified of death from a very young age. My parents used to put me to [...]

August 2012 Nomination: The Whitsun Weddings [18 October 1958. From The Whitsun Weddings] There are so many Larkin poems I could nominate but ‘The Whitsun Weddings’ is very special to me. It [...]

July 2012 Nomination: Wires [4 November 1950. From The Less Deceived] I think this was the very first poem I ever read by Larkin. It was published in The Spectator in the issue of 2 October 1953. [...]

June 2012 Nomination: And now the leaves suddenly lose strength [3 November 1961. From Collected Poems (1988)] This is an uncollected poem written in 1961. It is a changing of the seasons poems [...]

May 2012 Nomination: At Grass [3 January 1950. From The Less Deceived (1955)] This poem reminds me forcibly of Philip’s strong attachment to the RSPCA and his utter loathing of cruelty to [...]

April 2012 Nomination: Afternoons [September 1959. From The Whitsun Weddings] This poem was written when Philip Larkin lived in his top flat in Pearson Park in Hull. He loved living in a high [...]

March 2012 Nomination: The Building [9 February 1972. From High Windows] Having suffered a minor stroke at the beginning of the month, I spent the first two weeks of December 2011 in Hull Royal [...]

February 2012 Nomination: Ambulances [10 January 1961. From The Less Deceived] Rather like ‘Aubade’, this poem is a portrait of Larkin’s fear and contemplation of death. Yet it manages to [...]

January 2012 Nomination: I Remember, I Remember [8 January 1954. From The Less Deceived] Although Philip Larkin and I come from different worlds and diffferent decades, we share one close [...]