Larkin100: Poet Laureate Simon Armitage to give reading in Hull

CENTENARY: Philip Larkin. Picture credit: Hull University

By Simon Bristow

Poet Laureate Simon Armitage will give a reading in Hull on August 9 at the second of two events that day celebrating the centenary of Philip Larkin’s birth.

Mr Armitage will be appearing from 6pm at the University of Hull’s Middleton Hall, where Larkin once introduced poets such as Ted Hughes and Robert Lowell.

Earlier, from 2pm at Hull Truck Theatre, a medley of creative talents will perform Finding Home, a show presented by Larkin100 that mixes poetry, music, and dance.

This event, which runs until 4.15pm so people can attend both, will see writer and broadcaster Matthew Sweet steer an audience through an afternoon in the city that both he and Larkin sometimes called home.

Imtiaz Dharker, an Honorary Vice-President of the Philip Larkin Society, will share her newly commissioned poem on Larkin. Hull’s JoinedUpDance Company will perform This Tide of Humber, a mixed-media dance piece based on another Imtiaz Dharker poem, and Wes Finch, a Coventry-based musician, will set Larkin’s words to music. Hull band The Broken Orchestra and city poet Vicky Foster will tell stories of people Larkin might meet if he walked the streets of Hull today. 

The Philip Larkin Society is at the heart of national celebrations of his centenary year. Events have already taken place in Hull, Coventry, Guernsey, and London, but the focus now is on the exact day of his birth.

Larkin is arguably the greatest English poet of the twentieth century. Although born in Coventry, his adopted home for the last thirty years (1955-85) of his life was Hull, where he worked as the university’s Librarian.

Tickets for the Hull Truck event cost £15 and £12 for concessions, and can be booked by calling Hull Truck Box Office on (01482) 323638.

Doors for the Simon Armitage poetry reading open at 5.30pm, with the event running until 7.15pm. Tickets cost £17 plus booking fee and can be ordered here.

Simon Armitage, who was born and grew up in West Yorkshire, is the recipient of numerous prizes and awards, including the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry and the PEN Prize for Translation. He is Professor of Poetry at the University of Leeds. His critical book, A Vertical Art, brings together the vibrant and engaging lectures from his tenure as Oxford Professor of Poetry (2015-2019). 

The Philip Larkin Society was founded in 1995, ten years after the poet’s death, and has become a national and international focus for lovers of his writings.

The society’s president is Rosie Millard, known, among other things, for her dynamic chairing of Hull’s UK City of Culture year in 2017. Vice-presidents include: Imtiaz Dharker; Grayson Perry; Tom Courtenay; Stewart Lee; Andrew Motion; and Martin Jennings, the sculptor of the Larkin Statue at Paragon Interchange.