I think Sunny Prestatyn is one of my favourite Larkin poems. It was included in his 1964 collection, The Whitsun Weddings. I like the humorous tone, with that hint of something darker underneath. There is a disturbing suggestion of real-life violence here. The life of the poster can be taken as the story of a human life.
I can see in my mind’s eye exactly the kind of railway poster that Larkin is referring to. They used bold, primary colours, clean lines and idealised imagery to make British seaside resorts look more attractive than they could ever possibly be in reality. It’s this gap between the ideal and grim reality that the poem is all about. Just how sunny is Prestatyn, on the north Welsh coast, anyway?
We are still in the steam era here, just. And what was Whitsun? It is the Christian festival of Pentecost, taking place eight weeks after Easter Sunday. It therefore moves in the calendar, as Easter does each year. In 1972 the Whitsun bank holiday was replaced by the late spring bank holiday, giving a more predictable date each year, and the word “Whitsun” began to move back into the past, just like steam trains.
Sunny Prestatyn by Philip Larkin
Come To Sunny Prestatyn
Laughed the girl on the poster,
Kneeling up on the sand
In tautened white satin.
Behind her, a hunk of coast, a
Hotel with palms
Seemed to expand from her thighs and
Spread breast-lifting arms.
She was slapped up one day in March.
A couple of weeks, and her face
Was snaggle-toothed and boss-eyed;
Huge tits and a fissured crotch
Were scored well in, and the space
Between her legs held scrawls
That set her fairly astride
A tuberous cock and balls
Autographed Titch Thomas, while
Someone had used a knife
Or something to stab right through
The moustached lips of her smile.
She was too good for this life.
Very soon, a great transverse tear
Left only a hand and some blue.
Now Fight Cancer is there.
The Good Reader 