Tribute group 'stunned' by attack on Larkin project

Organisers of Larkin 25 are staging a series of events to mark the 25th anniversary of the poet's death, which is intended to culminate on December 2 with the unveiling of a statue in Paragon Station.

The project, which would see a 7ft bronze of the poet installed on the station concourse, has the backing of Network Rail and the Philip Larkin Society.

But it is being fiercely opposed by a resident who has written to the city council urging it to reject an application for planning permission.

He said the sculpture would be "visually intrusive", a hazard to the visually impaired, and called it "a crass and philistine application that warrants refusal".

The chairman of Larkin 25 and a member of the statue's commissioning group, Prof Graham Chesters, said: "It's a baffling description of a statue of one of Britain's best loved poets. I'm speechless."

Sculptor Martin Jennings, who created a statue of the poet Sir John Betjeman at London's St Pancras Station, is already working on the tribute which is expected to arrive at a foundry in a fortnight.

The figure will capture the former Hull University librarian dashing for a train, clutching a trilby hat and a manuscript, with his gabardine mac blowing in his wake.

The inscription below it would read: "Philip Larkin, Poet and Librarian 1922-1985. That Whitsun I was late getting away."

Larkin once wrote of arriving at the station: "When your train comes to rest in Paragon Station against a row of docile buffers, you alight with an end-of-the-line sense of freedom."

The group has raised about 66,000 of the 80,000 cost of the statue and will hold a further fundraising event on September 2 featuring city-born actress Maureen Lipman.

Tickets and further information will be available via www.philiplarkin.co.uk