Philip Larkin's "Mother, Summer, I"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Education For Kids, Arts, Kids & Family

4.6 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 15 August 2023

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today’s poem is by Philip Arthur Larkin CH CBE FRSL (9 August 1922 – 2 December 1985), an English poet, novelist, and librarian. His first book of poetry, The North Ship, was published in 1945, followed by two novels, Jill (1946) and A Girl in Winter (1947), and he came to prominence in 1955 with the publication of his second collection of poems, The Less Deceived, followed by The Whitsun Weddings (1964) and High Windows (1974). He contributed to The Daily Telegraph as its jazz critic from 1961 to 1971, with his articles gathered in All What Jazz: A Record Diary 1961–71 (1985), and edited The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse(1973).[1] His many honours include the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.[2] He was offered, but declined, the position of Poet Laureate in 1984, following the death of Sir John Betjeman.

—Bio via Wikipedia

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, and welcome back to the Daily Poem, podcast from Goldberry Studios.
0:05.0	I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Tuesday, August 15, 2003.
0:11.3	Today's poem is by the British poet Philip Larkin, who was voted by the people of England,
0:19.6	the most beloved poet of the years 1950 to 2000.
0:26.6	A few years after that, the Times named him Britain's greatest post-war writer.
0:34.2	He was a novelist and poet, but also a librarian.
0:43.6	And maybe that has something to do with the next thing I'm going to say about him.
0:48.9	I'm not sure, but a lot of librarians seem to have this in common.
0:54.3	If you are a librarian and you're listening and you are not this way,
0:58.7	I apologize in advance.
0:59.9	Thank you for being the exception that proves the rule.
1:03.2	But he's known as being a bit of a gloomy poet.
1:09.3	He even said about himself that deprivation was to him what daffodils were for wordsworth,
1:21.4	which is quite something.
1:23.6	And if you find pictures of Philip Larkin, he's got a bit of a look to him. However,
1:33.3	he was not always gloomy in verse, even though he has a reputation for being a bit dour,
1:41.5	even in his poetry. And there's a kind of conundrum that comes along with that
1:48.9	reputation of his and this poem for today, which is entitled Mother Summer I. I'll read it once,
1:58.0	offer a few comments, and then read it a second time.
2:01.6	Mother, Summer, I, my Philip Larkin.
2:06.6	My mother, who hates thunderstorms, holds up each summer day and shakes it out suspiciously,
2:14.6	lest swarms of grape-dark clouds are lurking there.
	...

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