By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Philip Larkin wrote ‘The Mower’ in early summer 1979, and the poem was published in Humberside, the magazine of the Hull Literary Club, in autumn that same year. It’s the last truly great poem Larkin wrote, and, like many of his poems, takes a very simple everyday scene as its focus. And, like many of Larkin’s poems, death is one of its main themes.