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 fascinated me. I was born in Hull, and made the journey from Paragon
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 reading it, it’s impossible to hear it in any other
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 weather) is ‘Reference Back’ – for the not very simple reason
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 Yesterday’, ‘Toads’, ‘At Grass’ and ‘Wires’ and in all honesty
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 like the fact that it was one of the first
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 consisted of two short sentences, containing just 25 words. The second
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 interviewer had made it clear that she believed his poems were largely
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 “convent-child” to “Pope” share, with Larkin, that nightly problem of how to
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 are even more poignant (‘The Winter Palace’, ‘Days’, ‘I have started
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 advertising who could identify the source of Larkin’s images in this underdiscussed poem. It is
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 prose fiction, a novelist: but after the two early
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 surprisingly went on to say that he wished he could write like this
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. In his Introduction to All What Jazz (1970), his scalding attack on modernism in all
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 South in ’68. I had very little knowledge
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
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 that ‘I’ve never lived in hideous contact with them… The nearer you
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 touch. One day in 1965 one of those friends, a
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 (descriptive of particular pictures), as are ‘Sunny Prestatyn’ or ‘The Card-Players’,
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 the 6th. They are so dissimilar they are almost
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
