3. Philip Larkin was born in Coventry, England in 1922.
He earned his BA from St. John’s College, Oxford, where he
befriended novelist and poet Kingsley Amis and finished with
First Class Honours in English.
After graduating, Larkin undertook professional studies to
become a librarian.
4. He worked in libraries his entire life, first in Shropshire and
Leicester, and then at Queen’s College in Belfast, and finally
as librarian at the University of Hull.
In addition to collections of poetry, Larkin published two
novels—Jill (1946) and A Girl in Winter (1947)—as well as
criticism, essays, and reviews of jazz music.
5. His reviews on Jazz music were collected in two volumes: All
What Jazz: A Record Diary 1961-1968 and Required
Writing: Miscellaneous Pieces 1955-1982
He was one of post-war England’s most famous poets, and
was commonly referred to as “England’s other Poet Laureate”
until his death in 1985.
6. Indeed, when the position of laureate became vacant in 1984,
many poets and critics favored Larkin’s appointment, but
Larkin preferred to avoid the limelight.
Larkin achieved acclaim on the strength of an extremely small
body of work—just over one hundred pages of poetry in four
slender volumes that appeared at almost decade-long intervals.
7. These collections, especially The Less Deceived (1955), The
Whitsun Weddings (1964), and High Windows (1974), present
“a poetry from which even people who distrust poetry, most
people, can take comfort and delight,” according to X.J.
Kennedy in the New Criterion
8. Larkin employed the traditional tools of poetry—rhyme,
stanza, and meter—to explore the often uncomfortable or
terrifying experiences thrust upon common people in the
modern age.
Throughout his life, England was Larkin’s emotional territory
to an eccentric degree.
9. The poet distrusted travel abroad and professed ignorance of
foreign literature, including most modern American poetry.
Larkin’s Selected Letters, edited by his longtime friend, poet
Anthony Thwaite, reveals much about the writer’s personal
and professional life between 1940 and 1985.
10. Those strengths of craftsmanship and technical skill in
Larkin’s mature works received almost universal approval
from literary critics.
Dedicated to reaching out for his readers, the poet was a
staunch opponent of modernism in all artistic media.
11. Larkin felt that such cerebral experimentation ultimately
created a barrier between an artist and the audience and
provided unnecessary thematic complications.
Larkin’s output of fiction and essays is hardly more extensive
than his poetry.
12. Larkin stopped writing poetry shortly after his collection High
Windows was published in 1974.
In 2002, a notebook containing unpublished poems by Larkin
was found in a garbage dump in England, and the notebook’s
current owner consulted with auction houses in preparation
for selling it.
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