January 2011 Nomination: The Whitsun Weddings [18 October 1958. From The Whitsun Weddings] The line ‘we ran behind the backs of houses, crossed a street of blinding windscreens’ has long [...]

December 2010 Nomination: Wants [1 June 1950. From The Less Deceived] This is the poem that Larkin intones at the end of the Monitor film made with Betjeman in 1964. Once you’ve listened to him [...]

November 2010 Nomination: Reference Back [21 August 1955. From The Whitsun Weddings] One (NB: one) of my favourite Larkin poems (they tend to change depending on my mood, the time of year, the [...]

October 2010 Nomination: Days [3 August 1953. From The Whitsun Weddings] I first read Larkin poems at secondary school in the early 1980s in an anthology called This Day and Age. We studied ‘Born [...]

September 2010 Nomination: The Trees [2 June 1967. From High Windows] I have chosen ‘The Trees’, which I first published in the New Statesman when I was literary editor, on 17 May 1968. I also [...]

August 2010 Nomination: The Dance [30 June 1963–12 May 1964. From Collected Poems (1988)] On 15 February 2010, I received an email from Andy Newlove, the owner of Fairview Studios in Willerby. It [...]

July 2010 Nomination: Is it for now or for always [1943-4. From The North Ship (1945)] ‘It’s very difficult to write about being happy.’ Larkin’s words in an interview with the Observer after the [...]

June 2010 Nomination: How to Sleep [10 March 1950. From Collected Poems (1988)] Blessed are those whose heads hit the pillow and then sleep like stones until morning. Most of us, from [...]

May 2010 Nomination: The Explosion [5 January 1970. From High Windows] Speeding up to my sixth decade, months away now, alas not years, I find Larkin’s observations on his transit through life [...]

Nomination: Essential Beauty [26 June 1962. From The Whitsun Weddings] Although “Granny Graveclothes’ Tea” must surely be an invention, no doubt there are scholars of Fifties and Sixties [...]

March 2010 Nomination: Livings [16 October/23 November/10 December 1971. From High Windows] Larkin always said that he hadn’t wanted to be a poet. What he hoped for was a life as a writer of [...]

February 2010 Nomination: Absences [28 November 1950. From The Less Deceived] Larkin thought of the last line as sounding ‘like a slightly unconvincing translation from a French symbolist’ – and [...]

January 2010 Nomination: For Sidney Bechet [15 January 1954. From The Whitsun Weddings] Larkin’s poems with jazz connections reflect the enormous importance that jazz played in his life and work. [...]

December 2009 Nomination: Here [8 October 1961. From The Whitsun Weddings] Being an exile from Hull of more than forty years this poem has had many resonances for me over that time since I headed [...]

December 2008 Nomination: Money [19 February 1973. From High Windows] ‘Money’ has never been chosen so far. Perhaps it takes an age of inflation to fully appreciate a poem written in the [...]

November 2008 Nomination: Dockery and Son [28 March 1963. From The Whitsun Weddings] Larkin minced no words in his discussions of children. He condemns them as ‘awful’ and expresses his gratitude [...]

October 2008 Nomination: ‘Administration’ [3 March 1965] I worked at the University Library from 1963-1966 as a Library Assistant and made many friends there, with most of whom I still keep in [...]

August 2008 Nomination: Oils [14 March 1950. From XX Poems] ‘Oils’ appeared in XX Poems in 1951. It is the first in a diptych of poems, ‘Two Portraits of Sex’, which while not ekphrastic [...]

June 2008 Nomination: Water [6 April 1954. From The Whitsun Weddings] Philip Larkin wrote the unlike poems ‘Skin’ and ‘Water’ on two consecutive days in 1954: the first on 5 April, the second on [...]

May 2008 Nomination: Here [8 October 1961. From The Whitsun Weddings] I was recently doing some work on Larkin when my flatmate came into the room. As she was completely ignorant of Larkin and [...]