December Event

On Saturday December 2nd 2023  we shall be holding our annual event  that marks the death of Philip Larkin. It is a great opportunity for members of the Society  to meet up, reflect on the year gone by and look forward to upcoming events.

This December we are very pleased to announce  that  we will be holding a Larkin themed pub quiz hosted by PLS Vice President Alan Johnson. Enjoy a glass of mulled wine and a mince pie as well as the PLS merch stall.  Alan will also be bringing his books to sign and sell

The  event will take place at The Haworth, 449 Beverley Road, Hull, HU6 7LD from 2 to 5pm 

2024 Conference

“Something more fidgety and various,” 50 Years of High Windows.

It’s 1974 and Larkin has been forced to leave behind the high windows of his Pearson Park flat and move into his final home at Newland Park. The ongoing miners’ strikes threaten to turn off the lights across the country. Barry Bloomfield’s Bibliography of Larkin’s publications nags at him, the dates on the cover suggesting to Larkin that there’s ‘a tombstone being lowered over me’. Although Larkin goes on to publish one of his greatest poems- ‘Aubade’- three years later, High Windows is his final collection, even though he is only in his early fifties. However, sales of the collection are ‘exceptional- nearly 20 000 copies in less than a year – and, as Andrew Motion suggests, ‘High Windows turned him into a national monument.’

The Philip Larkin Society Conference 2024 invites contributors to use High Windows as a starting point for exploring and interrogating the work of Philip Larkin and his contemporaries. Contributors are certainly not expected to confine their approaches to High Windows itself; we would be particularly interested in presentations that explore Larkin’s diverse prose work as well as his poetry. The conference will take place close to the Brynmor Jones Library, where Larkin worked from 1955 until his death in 1985. Furthermore, we are delighted to announce that novelist, screenwriter and Philip Larkin Society Honorary Vice-President David Quantick will be our keynote speaker.

Building on the successful programme of our 2022 conference, we will present a range of approaches to Larkin’s work with a varied programme of contributors from across the arts and academic landscape. We are an inclusive society and would like to encourage submissions from people of all backgrounds and approaches. We are also looking for ways to actively support and promote under-graduate involvement.

Proposals (up to 300 words) should be submitted to larkinconference@gmail.com by Friday 25th November 2023.
The conference will take the format of 3 panels over two days, each consisting of 3x 20 minute papers and symposia/discussion forums.
Please submit proposals to larkinconference24@gmail.com
Academic/research queries: Please contact Daniel Vince (PLS trustee) at vinvindan@gmail.com.
Non-academic/creative enquiries, travel and accommodation, funding : please email Lyn Lockwood (deputy chair of the Philip Larkin Society) at lynlockwood70@yahoo.co.uk.

Categories: Comparative, Linguistics, Pedagogy, Literary Theory, 20th & 21st Century, Poetry, Miscellaneous
Event Date: 14-15/3/24 Abstract Due: 25/11/23