LARKIN’S LIFE IN MOTION
THE LATE Australian author Peter Porter once described Hull as “the most poetic city in England” yet its literary heritage doesn’t always get the recognition it deserves.
Anywhere else that was once home to such notable figures as Andrew Marvell and Stevie Smith would be shouting about it from the rooftops, but that is anathema to a city that is more at home being self-deprecating than self-aggrandising.
It’s interesting, though, that arguably Hull’s most famous literary star, Philip Larkin, wasn’t actually born there – although it was his home for the last 30 years of his life.
Larkin died in a hospital bed in Hull back in 1985 and despite the salacious and sometimes controversial details about his life that have emerged from letters and biographies in the intervening period, including accusations of bigotry and a penchant for pornography, his popularity with the reading public hasn’t waned.
There’s a reason why he was voted Britain’s best-loved poet in a Poetry Book Society survey in 2003, for Larkin was a man for the big occasion – he wrote about life, love, sex and death and he did so in a way that ordinary people could relate to, which explains why he’s still so often quoted.
Last year, Larkin was given his own spot in the vaunted Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey with his memorial stone sitting between those of Anthony Trollope and Ted Hughes – who he called “the Incredible Hulk” and once memorably described as looking “like a Christmas present from Easter Island”.
His popularity has been seized upon by Hull – in 2010 a statue of him was unveiled on the concourse of the city’s railway station. This was the culmination of a series of events to commemorate the 25th anniversary of his death – including a trail of 40 giant fibreglass toads, a homage to one of his best known poems, dotted around the city and the streets of East Yorkshire where he once walked.
With Hull basking the spotlight as UK City of Culture it turned to him once again earlier this year with the Philip Larkin Society teaming up with the University of Hull to create an impressive exhibition on the man and his work.
The author is back in the spotlight in a new TV documentary –
– which is being shown next week as part of Sky Arts’ Passions series.
Sir Andrew Motion, the former Poet Laureate, explores Larkin’s life and work and examines the relationship between the poet and the city he called home in what is a candid and intimate portrait of his friend.
Motion was an eager young poet in 1976 when he landed his first job teaching English at Hull University and he confesses it wasn’t by chance that he ended up there.
“It wasn’t the only reason I went to Hull but I knew Philip Larkin was there and this gave me the chance to meet him,” he says, speaking from his home in Baltimore, where he now lives.
However, his hopes of meeting one of his literary heroes were initially dashed. “I told my new colleagues of my admiration for him and how much I’d like to meet him. Well, they just shook their heads and said ‘Sorry, it’s not going to happen.’ They told me he hated everybody and particularly hated the English department.”
It wasn’t until a few months later that he was taken by a colleague who knew Larkin to join him for a lunchtime drink in a nearby pub.
“Philip liked a drink but on this occasion he took a swig of his beer and it went down the wrong way. He whipped off his glasses and got his handkerchief out, propping himself up against the bar. Once he’d recovered we started talking and he asked me what my father did and I said he was a brewer and his face lit up – I can still see the expression on his face. So I think as ice-breakers go that was pretty good.”
It marked the beginning of a friendship that continued up until Larkin’s death, with Motion among those granted access to his inner sanctum.
The popular perception of Larkin is that of a solitary, curmudgeonly figure. But Motion remembers him more fondly and says he was a much more complex figure.
“There’s the gloomy Philip Larkin everyone knows about, there was the terrified Larkin and the nine-to-five Larkin. He had a reputation for being grumpy and fierce, someone who didn’t suffer fools gladly, someone who was shy and withdrawn. But there was also the teenage Larkin in his bedroom with his drum kit and that younger self never disappeared entirely.”
Motion says he could also be incredibly good company. “We spent time listening to records and talking about books and even though we were very different in a lot of ways we became very good friends.”
He points out, too, that Larkin could also be hilariously funny, a trait that’s often overlooked. “He was witty and a brilliant mimic and there were times when I’d be almost falling over with laughter. I’ve never met anyone who made me laugh as much as him.”
Larkin has become synonymous with Hull though his relationship with his adopted home wasn’t always an easy one. He once described the city as a “frightful dump” in a letter to his friend Robert Conquest shortly after his arrival in 1955. They might seem a slightly odd couple, but Motion disagrees. “What he liked about Hull was it was out of the way. He liked outof-the-way places because it meant people were less likely to bother him and he liked the fact that you didn’t get any bull **** from people.
“Also the working conditions suited him. He was never going to be a bohemian kind of person and though he took his job at the library very seriously, and was very good at it, it didn’t follow him home and he was able to focus on this other life as a writer.”
Motion, who has written an awardwinning biography of Larkin, believes the poet’s personality and his work were often in conflict with each other.
“More than once he talked about the perfection of the life or the perfection of the work. I remember him saying to me, ‘I’ve tried to perfect the art and all I’ve done is f*** up the life.”
Despite Larkin’s personal habits having been raked over and criticised in recent years, Motion feels it’s his work rather than his complex, and often troubled, personality that will endure in years to come.
“He wrote the most unflinching, melancholy, honest poems, with the most memorable phrases about our human condition that were written in the last quarter of the last century.
“Time has rocked his personal reputation but it only confirms how good these poems are. They rise above the fires that raged in his life and today they look beautiful and true, and you can’t ask much more from poetry than that.”