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THE PHILIP LARKIN SOCIETY

Since The Philip Larkin Society was founded in 1995, ten years after the poet’s death, it has become a national and international focus for lovers of his writings.

The Society, a registered charity, provides a forum for the discussion of all aspects of Larkin’s work: as poet, novelist, jazz critic and librarian. Our lively, illustrated Journal, About Larkin, mingles reviews and commentaries on the Society’s activities with articles of a more substantial literary nature. Our podcast Tiny In All That Air has featured some of the world’s leading scholars on Larkin and his contemporaries, such as Professor James Booth and Professor Zachary Leader, but also hosts Larkin chat with writers and artists, PLS committee members, honorary vice presidents and, of course, the members themselves. Our new YouTube channel provides a wealth of recordings, historic and new. Our social media presence on X and Instagram has thousands of followers. We are always looking for new and creative ways to promote knowledge and understanding of Philip Larkin and to get as many people as possible involved from Hull to all around the world. You too can become a member!

WHAT ARE OUR AIMS?
  • To promote the public knowledge and appreciation of the works of Philip Larkin (1922-1985) and his literary contemporaries
  • To bring together all those who admire Larkin’s work as poet, novelist, jazz critic and librarian
  • To bring about publications on all things Larkinesque
WHAT DO WE DO?
  • Online and in person events such as conferences, readings, and talks about all aspects of Larkin’s life
  • Online members social events
  • About Larkin Journal, published twice a year in April and October
  • A regular e-newsletter
  • A member of the Alliance of Literary Societies
  • Twitter, YouTube and Instagram channels
  • A regular podcast, Tiny in All that Air.
RECENT NEWS
Commemorating Philip Larkin on 2nd December 2024
Every year the PLS holds a members only event on 2nd December to mark Larkin’s death at the age of 63 in 1985. These events have taken many different forms
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Stunning News!
Nick Cave, writer and musician, has done the Society the honour of accepting its invitation to join our distinguished and varied list of Honorary Vice Presidents. In 2019, he was
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Christmas ideas at The Philip Larkin Society
Did you know that Larkin was a great present buyer? Contrary to popular belief, he was often the first person to organise gifts for his colleagues at the Brynmor Jones
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POEM REVIEW

Home is so Sad

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 please others, it tries to draw back the occupants by remaining unchanged. Larkin shows the fears people have about change (something he to was sceptical about) especially modernisation. He makes the poem personal, as if we are already aware of what is contained in the house – the last line especially. ‘ That Vase’. The poem illustrates how Larkin could often personify the Home into the grief of non-existence. Something we can all relate to. James Blythe
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As Bad as a Mile

October 2007 Nomination: As Bad as a Mile [9 February 1960. From The Whitsun Weddings] When ‘As Bad as a Mile’ was first published in the University of Buffalo’s Audit magazine in February 1960, it was originally titled ‘As Good as a Mile’. On the face of it, such a minor editorial change might not seem worthy of mention, but where poetry is concerned it’s also worth bearing in mind that meaning hinges carefully on each and every word. As a result, it’s my inkling that Larkin’s retrospective switch between the classic binary oppositions of the Judeo-Christian moral dichotomy holds, in many respects, the key to the fullest and most interesting reading of the poem. ‘As Bad as a Mile’ is a poem about failure. It takes, as is typical of Larkin, a mundane and everyday act of chance and invests within it an existential and revelatory significance. Hence, when the apple core is flipped
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Here

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 his poetry I handed her the Collected Poems, opened on ‘Here’ and she duly proceeded to read the poem. It took her some time, being German and not being a literature student, but she finally handed back the volume with tears in her eyes and said: ‘I would never have found these words to say it, but I know exactly what he is trying to say.’ In one single sentence, under the influence of one single poem, my friend had not only captured the essence of Larkin’s poetry but had also involuntarily almost quoted the poet himself: ‘I want people to say: “Yes, that’s it, I know exactly what he means.”‘ It is this recognition of the self that renders
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Next, Please

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 dreary commercial and bureaucratic exchanges is not much of an invitation to read. Once Larkin has us at the edge of the cliffs however, we remember so well the hours spent waiting for the teasing armada to dock and unload its cargo of opportunity. How loudly this message chimes for those of us who regularly submit to poetry journals and who must wait months for a reply. Will one’s work ever be considered for a collection? I am certainly guilty of investing too much mental effort in anticipation of the future and too little in appreciating the riches of the now. But it’s not just a matter of strong recognition. The final stanza is so cinematic and chilling. The black-sailed unfamiliar, the birdless silence.. Like so much of
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Love, we must part now

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 discussed each one with him. Of course they’re not very good, often derivative etc. etc. but for me they have something which has nothing to do with their intrinsic literary value or with any perceptive appreciation on my part. I’d choose ‘Love, we must part now’. Ruth Siverns
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Posterity

June 2006 Nomination: Posterity [17 June 1968. From High Windows] There are so many of Philip Larkin’s poems I could select as my poem of the month, but one I must mention is ‘Posterity’. Several people who knew Larkin speak of his sense of humour amid the Stygian gloom that others have wrapped around him. I recall reading the poem in my early twenties after High Windows came out in 1974. I was at university and recognized the sort of academic that the poem ostensibly satirized because I had worked in what was then the British Museum Library Reading Room, which has since become the British Library in Euston Road. I remembered the overenthusiastic and desperately ambitious type very well. I recalled one specimen giving me chapter and verse on his chosen subject’s upbringing thereby ‘proving’ his thesis about the man and his work. It was only much later on the publication of Motion’s biography,
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Love Again

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 Hamilton grouped ‘Love Again’ with a handful of previously unpublished poems he termed ‘desperately miserable, indeed inconsolable.’ It’s hard to disagree. Even though ‘Love Again’ has its faults — what Hamilton was apt to call ‘wonky’ moments as poetry — its searing power makes such blemishes seem negligible. And while some critics resist a purely autobiographical reading of Larkin’s work, the poem’s roots seem painfully, fallibly human. Sexual jealousy makes for unforgettable imagery: ‘Someone else feeling her breasts and cunt,/Someone else drowned in that lash-wide stare…’ (Hardy would have cherished that heart-stopping, hyphenated image of the loved one.) But as Martin Amis and others have observed, Larkin also seemed to enter a poetic No Man’s Land in this late, self-probing, almost stunted lyric from 1979; as with the
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Afternoons

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 room, where he could observe the comings and goings of other people. As he walked through the park he used to pass a children’s playground, and what he saw there inspired this bleak poem. I often thought of it when I myself was a young mother in the late 50’s and 60’s, and knew exactly what he meant by “the hollows of afternoons”. But how did Philip know? This poem is an example of his acute observation and imaginative ability to get inside the skin of his subjects. It is a poem that will never date as long as there are young mothers and children and play-grounds. Winifred Dawson [2001]
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The Card Players

August 2005 Nomination: The Card Players [6 May 1970. From High Windows] The aspect of ‘The Card-Players’ that I find most beguiling is its celebration of raw, earthy and unfettered maleness. It’s is a poem about men behaving badly that positively revels in its freedom from “feminine” (speaking stereotypically) notions of decorum, propriety and etiquette. These normal constraints don’t have to be observed because there are no women around to insist upon them. The “boys” can simply get pissed, gamble, smoke, fart, piss out the door and do all the other things that chaps like to do when the “ladies” aren’t around to place checks on their behaviour. Jan, Dirk and the others aren’t the only male transgressors here. Outside of the poem stands Larkin, presumably delighting in the freedom that his secure poetic reputation gives him to introduce into English literature such unsavoury subject matter and bar-room vocabulary: the famous “four-letter Larkin”
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Reference Back

December 2005 Nomination: Reference Back [21 August 1955. From The Whitsun Weddings] I love the way Larkin likens music to time, how he ‘bridges’ the gap so to speak not just with music and time but with his mother (I presume) and himself and then again with the reader. The sense of loss and emptiness so familiar to Larkin fans is never stronger. It speaks to the heart of everyone’s memories and stirs within the ultimate truth that time never slows and things around us stay the same even as we age. I always think with this poem Larkin is implying that we often think our lives would be remarkedly different/better had we acted differently but we are still the same person and the outcome would always have been the same. It reminds me to savour each second of life and not cling onto regrets. Rebecca Moore
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Breadfruit

September 2011 Nomination: Breadfruit [19 November 1961. From Collected Poems (1988)] This is a poem that proclaims itself Larkin’s in many ways: by theme, by style and most delightfully by its wit. Written in 1961, and also published that winter – even though Larkin described it, in a letter to Robert Conquest, as ‘just about the worst poem I have ever let get set up’ – ‘Breadfruit’ belongs to the period of his growing confidence and success, and was therefore written by the Philip Larkin Maeve Brennan knew, the generous, courteous, sensitive and often charming person whose real qualities defy most features of his public persona. Perhaps that accounts for its gentle ending, where the birdless path to the tombstone is not invoked: the old men are allowed to return to the daydreams of their youth – daydreams almost comically erotic, that perhaps derive from the boys’ adventure magazines of Larkin’s youth, such as D.C. Thomson’s The
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Money

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 aftermath of the oil shock in 1973. Now that governments are frantically trying to ‘boost consumer spending’ and that the wisdom of ‘banking your screw’ (i.e. salary) has been questioned by the credit crunch, some of Larkin’s lines are once again eerily topical. Beyond those circumstances, however, ‘Money’ remains to me a quintessential Larkin poem. The first three stanzas accumulate disenchanted commonplaces and crass colloquialisms in the same way that a miser might hoard up increasingly worthless banknotes. The final stanza, then, exchanges the end-stopped trivialities of the preceding stanzas for an almost visionary mode. The full stop after ‘singing’ forces us to stop in mid-line and ponder the comparison of money to tempting sirens. The enjambments then take us through
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The Mower

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 at school. Naturally, the poem that most struck a chord with any angst-ridden, rebellious teenager was ‘This Be The Verse’. Even committing this poem to memory felt like a delicious act of subversion. When I first heard Larkin’s unique laconic rendition of this poem, it all made sense. It was Larkin’s ironical detachment and ability to distil complex ideas with lucid language that proved to be appealing. It wasn’t poetry concocted in an ivory tower but poetry rooted in experience. Sometimes, Larkin’s poetry didn’t always make an impact in the classroom, precisely because we were compelled to read it and butcher to death the various poetical tricks that Larkin’s deploys, where all that was crying out was for the language to be
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The Mower

March 2011 Nomination: The Mower [12 June 1979. From Collected Poems 1988] p>I would like to nominate ‘The Mower’, partly because I have an unaccountable interest in old mowers, partly because of the very precise date of its inspiration (10/06/79), but mostly (98%) because of ‘Next morning I got up and it did not’, and the killer final lines. Doubtless it’s a minority view, but ‘The Mower’ marks the summit of Larkin’s work for me. Combined with the references to the poem’s genesis in various letters, and Monica Jones’s testimony that ‘he came in howling…’, it indicates to me the hidden heart of the man. ‘What will survive’ of him is that ‘we should be careful / Of each other, we should be kind / While there is still time.’ John Whitbourn
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A Study of Reading Habits

February 2011 Nomination: A Study of Reading Habits [20 August 1960. From The Whitsun Weddings] I was fifteen when I found ‘A Study of Reading Habits’ in an untravelled corner of a poetry anthology used in my high school. For a bright and lonely adolescent, just beginning to understand the realities of the world, there were no better words to be penned than Larkin’s elegy to his own youth: “the dude who lets the girl down before the hero arrives, the chap who’s yellow and keeps the store, seem far too familiar.” Neil Sander
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Talking in Bed

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 the context of two humans, fighting against their own alienation and against a hostile environment, but extending to some eternal human dilemmas. The projection of how difficult it can be to tell the truth and keep your friends too is one of the finest achievements of the poem. Bahaa-Eddin Mazid
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An Arundel Tomb

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 Arundel Tomb’. (I’m especially interested in ecclesiastical buildings and all they represent.) In the end, though, I’ve chosen the latter, which I’ve admired ever since I first discovered a beautifully inscribed copy of it in Chichester Cathedral, displayed adjacent to where “The earl [of Arundel] and countess [Eleanor, his second wife] lie in stone”. The poet pinpoints one distinctive feature of the sculpture in particular, drawing us back into “pre-baroque” history and then highlighting subsequent changes in society – throughout which his subjects “rigidly persisted”, while “up the paths the endless altered people came”. The poem and what it depicts have a strong, personal resonance for me. I spent 1969-70 at Bishop Otter College in Chichester, which had close links with
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Lines on a Young Lady’s Photograph Album

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 of the ‘best’ and best-known pieces have been chosen but it does come as some surprise that ‘Lines on a Young Lady’s Photograph Album’ isn’t listed here yet. It achieves some typically Larkin balances between, for example, the respectable diction, its conscious imitation of the poetry of a previous century in its title and the not-so-faintly suggested pornographic intentions of the poet. It describes a private shame honestly admitted. It regrets the poet’s ‘exclusion’ from the young lady’s subsequent future while celebrating the freedom it allows to enjoy the captured moment; it praises the honesty and accuracy of the camera while enjoying the artificial nature of each ‘pose’ and the ‘fraud’ of the smiles. Larkin’s habitual understatement contrasts
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Aubade

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 mind than I’d like. The oblivion of death is what we all fear I think, and Larkin grabs it by the scruff of its neck and hangs it in front of you in a shivering way. Barry Rutter
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Cut Grass

June 2005 Nomination: Cut Grass [3 June 1971. From High Windows] This is sometimes thought as in some ways a companion piece to ‘The Trees’, Poem of the Month for May 2005 and another tying Larkin elegiacally to an England somewhere in the middle of the last century. But ‘The Trees’ is a discussion and a reflection on mortality, the possibility for change, the impermananence of life, and the possibility of renewal, another use of the image of a tree as a life force (as in ‘Love Songs in Age’). A bundle of tightly compressed metaphors. ‘Cut Grass’, on the other hand is almost pure imagery. The poet is completely invisible. There is no sense of an ‘I’ – there is a sense of an eye – the image falling as instant, like the image on a camera (with which Larkin was expert) preserving one moment, then and in England, now and in
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