A few years ago, for a birthday treat, I went to Hull. I wanted to walk The Larkin Trail, a tour of various workaday locations that held some significance to the poet Philip Larkin. It took me to the ...

Philip Larkin (1922-85) was the English Kafka. Both writers had an unnaturally close, even crippling attachment to their parents. Misery poisoned their emotional lives, yet inspired their art, as well ...

Our critic A.O. Scott walks you through a poem that speaks to his mood right now. It’s called “Party Politics,” but it’s not about those parties, or those politics. Isabella Cotier By A.O. Scott If ...

August 9 marks the centenary of Philip Larkin, one of the most admired poets of the twentieth century. When Larkin died of esophageal cancer in 1985 at 63, he was England’s most beloved living poet.

The world of Philip Larkin’s verse is far from glamorous. His natural habitat was English suburbia, a realm of grey dawns, hollow afternoons and low horizons. He spent most of his adult life working ...

One of the most famous poems of the last half-century must be Philip Larkin's "Annus Mirabilis." Its first stanza goes: Re-reading it recently, I was struck by an odd thought: If the editor of some ...

The other morning on C-SPAN I saw at the Library of Congress our current poet laureate, a man of nearly 80, long white hair parted in the middle, reading incomprehensible verse in a deep southern ...

Philip Larkin was head librarian at the University of Hull and produced most of his published poetry and other writing while living in the city A letter written by poet and librarian Philip Larkin to ...