麻豆社

Across ten programmes and ten Philip Larkin poems, Simon Armitage, the Poet Laureate, finds out what happens when he revisits and unpicks Larkin's work in his centenary year.

Episode eight:

Simon Armitage explores extracts from Philip Larkin's 'Bridge for the Living', which ends with an unusually uplifting final verse for a Larkin poem: 'Reaching for the world as our lives do/As all lives do ... Always it is by bridges that we live.' 'Bridge for the Living' was a commissioned poem, set to music by the composer Anthony Hedges to mark the opening of the Humber Bridge.

Commissioned poems don't always survive the moment of their making - so does this one deserve our attention in 2022?

And why did Larkin call it 'Bridge for the Living'?

Producer: Faith Lawrence
Mixed by: Sue Stonestreet