Poet and musician, Ivor Cutler (Larkin's contemporary) with Bruce Lindsey and Gavin Hogg (January 2023)

Tiny In All That Air

This episode’s guests are Gavin Hogg and Bruce Lindsay and we are discussing Ivor Cutler, poet, writer, teacher and musician, who was born Jan 15th 1923 and so is a close chronological contemporary of Philip Larkin, although their paths never crossed. We look at their surreal sense of humour, their different experiences of World War II, their approach to poetry, letter writing, jazz, public performance and the cultural landscape of Britain in the twentieth century.

Bruce Lindsay, Ivor Cutler: Life Outside the Sitting Room (Equinox, 2023)

https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/ivor-cutler/

Gavin Hogg and Hamish Ironside, We Peaked At Paper An Oral History of Fanzines (Boatwhistle Press, 2022)

https://www.boatwhistle.com/we-peaked-at-paper

Ivor Cutler poems referenced:

A Flat Man; Is that your Flap, Jack?; Creamy Pumpkins; Cycling; Giant: I Believe in Bugs; Mud; Pass the Ball, Jim ; Pickle Your Knees, Sleepy Old Snake; Life in A Scotch Sitting Room Vol 2

John Peel Sessions: https://peel.fandom.com/wiki/Ivor_Cutler

Philip Larkin poems referenced:

Bridge for the Living, Aubade, Essential Beauty, Mr Bleaney, Church Going

The Sunday Sessions (Faber and Faber, 1980)

The Selected Letters of Philip Larkin ed. Anthony Thwaite (Faber, 1993)

Letters to Monica by Philip Larkin ed. Anthony Thwaite (Faber, 2011)

Read more about Brunette Coleman in Trouble at Willow Gables and Other Fictions ed. James Booth (Faber and Faber, 2002)

Other cultural references

Centipede (band), John Peel, The Fall, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Albert Ammonds, Miles Davis, Robert Wyatt, Spike Milligan, The Goons, John Betjeman, John Cooper Clark, Van Morrison, Linton Kwesi Johnson Forces of Victory (1979), Harold Pinter, Charlie Parker, Neil Ardley, Count Basie, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Sidney Bechet.

Interludes – Thelonious Monk (Round Midnight and Thelonius)

Produced by Lyn Lockwood and Gavin Hogg

PLS Membership and information: The Philip Larkin Society – Philip Larkin

Theme music: 'The Horns Of The Morning' by The Mechanicals Band. Buy 'The Righteous Jazz' at their Bandcamp page: https://themechanicalsband.bandcamp.com/album/the-righteous-jazz