Culture shock?

In Competition 2829 you were invited to imagine what Philip Larkin might have made of the news that Hull has been anointed 2017’s City of Culture.

Despite its unpromising image, this city-of-culture-in-waiting has nurtured a wide range of creative talents: from poets such as Andrew Marvell and Stevie Smith, to the actor Tom Courtenay, the film director Anthony Minghella and folk legends the Watersons. And of course Larkin himself, who sought refuge in the university library from celebrity and the metropolitan literati.

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Most of you had the poet conform to his self-perpetuated image of right-wing curmudgeon, but there was a glimpse here and there of a softer side too; that quiet voice of celebration that sits alongside the familiar detached world-weariness.

Brian Lavery, Steve Baldock and D.A. Prince stood out in a strong field. The winners, printed below, are rewarded with £30 each. The extra fiver goes to Melanie Branton.

So Hull’s been named the capital of culture?
Now hordes of gawking tourists will descend.
The council must be pissing in their knickers
At the thought of all the money that they’ll spend.

There’ll be no decent jazz, just mindless pop
songs
With thuggish, thumping basslines (what a
bore!)
And ‘artists’ building childish installations,
As no one’s ever taught them how to draw.

I have no Truck with gurning, shrieking luvvies
Who gobble public funding for ‘the arts’
And populate their gaudy, blaring freakshows
With a cast of brute neanderthals and tarts.

In fact, I loathe this ‘culture city’ business —
A vulgar stunt to lure the bored and thick…
But, if they must perpetuate the circus,
There’s places worse than Hull that they could
pick.
Melanie Branton

‘This was Philip Larkin’s room, he wrote
There at that very desk. It’s kept the same.’
She’ll point to books, a pair of specs, and quote
A cliché someone published in my name.