Philip Larkin

Described by Eric Homberger as ‘the saddest heart in the post-war supermarket’ Philip Larkin is often dismissed as bleak or gloomy in outlook. His poems do focus on the darker aspects of life such as isolation, alienation and death (don’t all the poets address these issues?). Christopher Ricks said of Larkin that he had ‘a deep and true feeling for human loneliness and longing’ and these themes are definitely evident in the poems on the course. He also, however, had an eye for beauty, joy and the power of love, all of which are captured in rare moments in his poetry like stars shining out of the dark night sky.

Raised in an unhappy home environment, he never married or had children but he did have some long-term relationships with women including an on/off relationship for over 30 years with Monica Jones who lived with him for the last few years of his life. He had a long career as a librarian in Hull university, which he managed to balance with his writing, and was published regularly. He enjoyed great success as a poet in his own lifetime, being critically celebrated and heaped with awards including a CBE which he refused to accept. If you want to hear his voice (always valuable when studying a poet where recordings are available) you can listen to the episode of Desert Island Discs on bbc. co.uk and learn about his love of jazz music.

STYLE:

Larkin said of his work: ‘I write about experiences, often quite simple everyday experiences which somehow acquire some sort of special meaning for me, and I write poems about them to preserve them’. The poems on the course feature such ordinary occurrences as a wander through an empty church, seeing a wedding party board a train, an ambulance pass by and a mowed lawn. Each experience becomes a jumping off point for an exploration of a deeper philosophical concern, for example, in ‘Ambulances’ the ambulance becomes a symbol for our inevitable mortality:

They comes to rest at any kerb:

All streets in time are visited.

In ‘Church Going’ he considers the decline of organised religion in the twentieth century:

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,

And always end much at a loss like this, Wondering what to look for; wondering,

too,

When churches fall completely out of use What we shall turn them into…

For someone who professed to reject marriage he wrote frequently about love, sometimes cynically, sometimes tenderly. In the ‘Whitsun Weddings’ he mocks the wedding parties he witnesses from his vantage point on the train:

We passed them, grinning and pomaded, girls

In parodies of fashion, heels and veils… And yet the poem ends with a mysterious image that hints at hope for the future, of something beginning rather than ending: And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled

A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.

‘An Arundel Tomb’ explores the idea of love surviving death. Initally he critiques the artificiality, as he sees it, of the sculpted couple holding hands:

‘The stone fidelity/ They hardly meant’, but he concludes by celebrating the symbolism of their gesture: ‘to prove/ Our almost-instinct almost true:/ What will survive of us is love.’

His style is very accessible with modern phrasing and colloquial language dominating. He liked traditional poetic forms and rhyming schemes, famously favouring the poetry of Thomas Hardy when asked to compile an anthology of British poetry. His use of ordinary, down-to-earth language makes the poetry feel fresh and clear:

And for a second get it whole, So permanent and blank and true.

The fastened doors recede. Poor soul, They whisper at their own distress;

Larkin’s poetry can be read and analysed without too much help from your teacher so make up your own mind about his themes and style. Often his ambiguous endings can be open to interpretation – trust your gut instincts and build your own relationship with the poems. Oh and google ‘This Be The Verse’ – you’ll be most entertained!