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 Larkin’s verse. The notion of starting “afresh,
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 monosyyllabic simplicity of the first two quatrains to the splendid
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 and posters, one couldn’t help but be reminded of ‘Sunny Prestatyn’. A poem that
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
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 this poem had been an adolescent, D.H. Lawrence inspired fantasy which may
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 Alice we fall into a grey and claustrophobic world that assaults us
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Don Lee revealed to the thirty or so walkers this verse found among papers in the Brynmor Jones Library but, so far, unpublished. Larkin’s
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 2004. It was the christening of Tracy Barlow’s baby, and ‘Born Yesterday’
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 and atmospheric Philip Larkin’s poem about going to the
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 end. Mary Kelly
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,
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 sentences, with the first continuing right up
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 experts to rank amongst Larkin’s finest work. This may be, but the poem puts over a hard-hitting environmental
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 about animals and just how cruel humans can be to them.
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
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 language make it easy for listeners to absorb at first hearing. It seems
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 absorbed in whatever we were doing. It always seemed
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
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 time called Holy Smoke by Jane and Anna Campion. On one
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 (over several months, each morning, while shaving – and not just any
