My poems are the product of a relationship between a side of my mind which is conscious, alert, educated and manipulative, and a side which is as murky as a primaeval swamp. I can't predict when this relationship will flower. If I try to goad it into existence I merely engage with one side of my mind or the other, and the poem suffers. I want my writing to be as clear as water. No ornate language; very few obvious tricks. I want readers to be able to see all the way down through its surfaces into the swamp. I want them to feel they're in a world they thought they knew, but which turns out to be stranger, more charged, more disturbed than they realised. In truth, creating this world is a more theatrical operation than the writing admits, and it's this discretion about strong feeling, and strong feeling itself, which keeps drawing me back to the writers I most admire: Wordsworth, Edward Thomas, Philip Larkin.

Motion spent his last day as Poet Laureate holding a creative writing class at his alma mater, [[Radley College]], before giving a poetry reading and thanking Peter Way, the man who taught him English at Radley, for making him who he was.  [[Carol Ann Duffy]] succeeded him as Poet Laureate on 1 May 2009.

• 1975: won the Newdigate prize for Oxford undergraduate poetry
• 1976: Eric Gregory Award
• 1981: wins Arvon Foundation's International Poetry Competition with The Letter
• 1984: John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for Dangerous Play: Poems 1974-1984
• 1986: Somerset Maugham Award for The Lamberts
• 1987: Dylan Thomas Prize for Natural Causes
• 1999: appointed Poet Laureate for ten years
• 1994: Philip Larkin: A Writer’s Life wins the Whitbread Prize for Biography
• 2009: Knighthood

Poetry

• 1972: Goodnestone: a sequence. Workshop Press
• 1976: Inland. Cygnet Press
• 1977: The Pleasure Steamers. Sycamore Press
• 1981: Independence. Salamander Press
• 1983: Secret Narratives. Salamander Press
• 1984: Dangerous Play: Poems 1974-1984. Salamander Press / Penguin
• 1987: Natural Causes. Chatto & Windus
• 1988: Two Poems. Words Ltd
• 1991: Love in a Life. Faber and Faber
• 1994: The Price of Everything. Faber and Faber
• 1997: Salt Water'.' Faber and Faber
• 1998: Selected Poems 1976-1997. Faber and Faber
• 2001: A Long Story. The Old School Press
• 2002: Public Property. Faber and Faber
• 2009: The Cinder Path. Faber and Faber

Criticism

• 1980: The Poetry of Edward Thomas. Routledge & Kegan Paul
• 1982: Philip Larkin. (Contemporary Writers series) Methuen
• 1986: Elizabeth Bishop. (Chatterton Lectures on an English Poet)
• 1998: Sarah Raphael: Strip!. Marlborough Fine Art (London)
• 2008: Ways of Life: On Places, Painters and Poets. Faber and Faber

Biography and memoir

• 1986: The Lamberts: George, Constant and Kit. Chatto & Windus
• 1993: Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life. Faber and Faber
• 1987: Keats: A Biography. Faber and Faber
• 2006: In the Blood: A Memoir of my Childhood. Faber and Faber

Fiction

• 1989: The Pale Companion. Penguin
• 1991: Famous for the Creatures. Viking
• 2003: The Invention of Dr Cake. Faber and Faber
• 2000: Wainewright the Poisoner: The Confessions of Thomas Griffiths Wainewright (biographical novel)

Edited works, Introductions or forwards

• 1981: Selected Poems: William Barnes. Penguin Classics
• 1982: The Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry with Blake Morrison. Penguin
• 1994: Thomas Hardy: Selected Poems. Dent
• 1993: New Writing 2 (With Malcolm Bradbury). Minerva in association with the British Council
• 1994: New Writing 3 (With Candice Rodd). Minerva in association with the British Council
• 1997: Penguin Modern Poets: Volume 11 with Michael Donaghy and Hugo Williams. Penguin
• 1998: Take 20: New Writing. University of East Anglia
• 1999: Verses of the Poets Laureate: From John Dryden to Andrew Motion. With Hilary Laurie. Orion.
• 1999: Babel: New Writing by the University of East Anglia's MA Writers. University of East Anglia.
• 2001: Firsthand: The New Anthology of Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. University of East Anglia
• 2002: Paper Scissors Stone: New Writing from the MA in Creative Writing at UEA. University of East Anglia.
• 2001: The Creative Writing Coursebook: Forty Authors Share Advice and Exercises for Fiction & Poetry. With Julia Bell. Macmillan
• 2000: John Keats: Poems Selected by Andrew Motion. Faber and Faber
• 2001: Here to Eternity: An Anthology of Poetry. Faber and Faber
• 2002: The Mays Literary Anthology; Guest editor. Varsity Publications
• 2003: 101 Poems Against War Faber and Faber (Afterword)
• 2003: First World War Poems. Faber and Faber
• 2006: Collins Rhyming Dictionary. Collins
• 2007: Bedford Square 2: New Writing from the Royal Holloway Creative Writing Programme. John Murray Ltd.