The 2003 documentary Philip Larkin: Love and Death in Hull, co-directed by James Kent, Nicolas Kent, and Ian MacMillan, opens with the voiceover recitation of a letter the poet, considered one of the best British poets of the 20th century, wrote to a friend. In it, he outlines the sixteen years of his life since leaving Oxford. Using stark, unsentimental prose he sketches his Spartan existence at home (a small flat without central heat or many other amenities; no “wife, children, house, land…”) and his sense of being an outsider “although I’m sure ninety-nine percent of people would say I’m very establishment and conventional.” The voice-over plays as we’re shown old black & white footage of Larkin biking through an overgrown churchyard cemetery, a filmmaking choice that is both on-the-nose and fitting given the tenor and content of Larkin’s work.
Larkin outside the University of Hull in 1979. Photo by Jane Bown/Topfoto
To the casual reader of poetry, British poet Philip Larkin (August 9, 1922 – December 2, 1985) might be best known for “This Be the Verse.”
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
Philip Larkin and friend in 1964. Courtesy the Estate of Philip Larkin
Larkin’s great gift was the ability to transform the quotidian into something deep and epic in scope, tapping into universal fears and needs while being surgically precise in his specificity of language, wholly accessible the whole while, and full of emotion. Misanthropic, misogynistic, pessimistic, racist, and atheistic, his worldview was grim, dark. Death was an obsession. Paradoxically – in the context of the current cultural moment, where art’s purpose is thought to be to push everyone toward facile uplift and a group-hug finish line – there is a cathartic release stoked by his writing. The jazz-scored documentary, which features interviews with Martin Amis and voice-work by actors James Wilby and Alison Steadman, function the same as Larkin’s poems. (He was also a low-key photographer, with a book of his photographs, “The Importance of Elsewhere: Philip Larkin’s Photographs,” published after his death.) It places the audience on a high-wire for an unflinching view of its subject matter and forgoes a safety net.
