“A TOPPLING steeple of tweed” is how Roger McGough describes the late, great English poet Philip Larkin.

The two wordsmiths never met, although they were often in the same room and corresponded several times by mail.

When McGough arrived at Hull University as a shy 17-year-old back in the late-50s, Larkin was its librarian and also acted as sub-warden of the young Liverpudlian’s halls of residence.

“He’d probably just arrived and hadn’t anywhere to live yet, so they just stuck him in there,” guesses McGough.

“He’d come in a suit, say grace after dinner and go out.

“He didn’t hang around with any of the students, he wasn’t at all friendly and I never said anything to him.”

On Friday, to mark the 25th anniversary of Larkin’s death, the Mersey Poet is giving a reading of a collection of the former librarian’s work.

Joining him on stage, at Liverpool Hope University’s Capstone Building, is pianist Ian Buckle, who will be performing a selection of miniatures – from Larkin’s contemporaries Bridge, Britten, Coates and Ireland to Graham Fitkin and Colin Matthews – reflecting the bittersweet and nostalgic qualities present in his work.

McGough is the natural choice to present a celebration of Larkin. Not just because, as he quips, they are “both bald and wear glasses”, but because their poetry focuses on the everyday experiences of ordinary people.

One of his own works is a haiku based on the Oxford graduate’s most notorious work, This Be the Verse, which opens “They f--k you up, your mum and dad/ They may not mean to but they do.”

In This Be Another Verse, McGough replies: “They don’t f--k you up, your mum and dad/ (Despite what Larkin says)/ It’s other grown-ups, other kids/ Who, in their various ways/Die.”

By the time the two poets sat in the same university dining room, the elder had published several collections of poetry, as well as two novels.

In 1955, the year he became librarian at Hull, the release of The Less Deceived founded his reputation as one of the foremost figures in 20th-century poetry.

It wasn’t until 1964 that Larkin published his next collection, The Whitsun Weddings, again to great acclaim.

“What used to appeal to me was his observation of life around him, like in The Whitsun Weddings, but sometimes he would look down on working class people enjoying themselves. There was a bit of that snobbism, too,” says McGough.

“There’s loneliness and he’s afraid of death. These don’t sound like things that appeal to you, do they? But they do when you’re young.”

Larkin did not like the sound of his own voice and would rarely publicly read his work – perfectly summed up by his publisher’s ex-wife, Jean Hartley, as a “piquant mixture of lyricism and discontent”.