May 2005 Nomination: The Trees [2 June 1967. From High Windows] I love ‘The Trees’ because of the optimistic note on which it ends – optimism being, for me, a quality that is often overlooked in [...]

May 2005 Nomination: The Trees [2 June 1967. From High Windows] I would like to nominate ‘The Trees’ for its mastery of versification and the nicely judged lingusitic modulation – from the mainly [...]

April 2005 Nomination: Sunny Prestatyn [October 1962? From The Whitsun Weddings] Walking through the suburbs of the city and finding oneself strangely drawn to the graffiti on walls, play-parks [...]

February 2005 Nomination: Lines on a Young Lady’s Photograph Album [18 September 1953. From The Less Deceived] Since Poem of the Month has been going for so long now it is no surprise that most [...]

January 2005 Nomination: The Explosion [5 January 1970. From High Windows] Not the first time this has been chosen, I know, but particularly and tragically relevant. What originally drew me to [...]

December 2004 Nomination: If, My Darling [23 May 1950. From XX Poems and The Less Deceived] It’s the sheer virtuosity of the visual imagery in ‘If, My Darling’ that hits you immediately. With [...]

September 2004 Nomination: And Yet [April 1948] It was outside Larkin’s then lodgings in College Street Leicester that Don Lee revealed to the thirty or so walkers this verse found among papers [...]

July 2004 Nomination: Born Yesterday [20 January 1954. From The Less Deceived] I am a member of the Larkin Society. I included ‘Born Yesterday’ in the episode of Coronation Street for 19th March [...]

June 2004 Nomination: To the Sea [October 1969. From High Windows] When Alan Bennett and I used to perform our reading of Philip Larkin’s poetry together, it came to me only gradually how precise [...]

April 2004 Nomination: No Road [28 October 1950. From XX Poems and The Less Deceived] I have always loved it; its music and rhythm, sheer lyrical grace and sadness, and the ‘dying fall’ at the [...]

January 2004 Nomination: Aubade [29 November 1977. The Times Literary Supplement 23 December 1977] A sulky fifty-six (Auden) means intimations of mortality are rather more frequent visitors to my [...]

December 2003 Nomination: Love Songs in Age [1 January 1957. From The Whitsun Weddings] I’ve always had a soft spot for ‘Love Songs in Age’, which was written in the year I was born. Just three [...]

August 2003 Nomination: Going, Going [25 January 1972. From High Windows] ‘Going, Going’, being a government-commissioned poem originally titled ‘Prologue’, is seldom considered by literary [...]

July 2003 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 [...]

June 2003 Nomination: Home is so Sad [31 December 1958. From The Whitsun Weddings] I nominated this poem as it shows how Larkin saw existence as being empty. How the concept of being was to [...]

May 2003 Nomination: Mother, Summer, I [August 1953. From Collected Poems(1988)] For anyone who enjoys reciting Larkin, as I do, this is a delightful little poem whose simple construction and [...]

April 2003 Nomination: To the Sea [October 1969. From High Windows] As a child our family holidays were always taken somewhere by the seaside where we could spend all day on the beach totally [...]

March 2003 Nomination: Talking in Bed [10 August 1960. From The Whitsun Weddings] I chose ‘Talking in Bed’ because it is at once so simple and so profoundly philosophical, obviously situated in [...]

February 2003 Nomination: No Road [28 October 1950. From XX Poems and The Less Deceived] I became interested in Philip Larkin’s poetry only three years ago by way of a novel I was reading at the [...]

January 2003 Nomination: The Explosion [5 January 1970. From High Windows] You really could not accuse Larkin of being Religious. To prove the point, he did read the Bible from cover-to-cover [...]