About Philip Larkin
Read famous Philip Larkin poems. Larkin was a great english poet and writer. Despite the controversy Larkin was chosen in a 2003 Poetry Book Society survey, as Britain's best-loved poet of the previous 50 years, and in 2008 The Times named him Britain's greatest post-war writer. From his mid-teens Larkin wrote ceaselessly, producing both poetry, initially modelled on Eliot and W. H. Auden, and fiction: he wrote five full-length novels, each of which he destroyed shortly after completion. When first published in 1945, The North Ship received just one review, in the Coventry Evening Telegraph, which concluded 'Mr Larkin has an inner vision that must be sought for with care. His recondite imagery is couched in phrases that make up in a kind of wistful hinted beauty what they lack in lucidity. Mr Larkin's readers must at present be confined to a small circle. Perhaps his work will gain wider appeal as his genius becomes more mature?' A few years later, though, the poet and critic Charles Madge came across the book and wrote to Larkin with his compliments. Larkin's poetry has been characterized as combining 'an ordinary, colloquial style', 'clarity', a 'quiet, reflective tone', 'ironic understatement' and a 'direct' engagement with 'commonplace experiences', while Jean Hartley summed his style up as a 'piquant mixture of lyricism and discontent'.Browse all poems and texts published on Philip Larkin
Three of his poems: This Be The Verse, The Whitsun Weddings and An Arundel Tomb featured in the Nation's Top 100 Poems as voted for by viewers of the BBC's Bookworm in 1995.
