"Each sudden gust of light explains itself as flames, but neither they, nor even bombs redoubled on the hills tonight can quite include me in their fear." -- Andrew Motion

Sir Andrew Motion, FRSL (born 26 October 1952) is an English poet, novelist and biographer, who presided as Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1999 to 2009.

Motion was born in London and raised in Stisted near Braintree in Essex. After being sent, at the age of seven, to boarding school, was educated at Radley College. Here, in the sixth form, he encountered Mr Wray, an inspiring English teacher who introduced him to poetry — first Hardy, then Larkin, W H Auden, Heaney, Hughes, Wordsworth and Keats. When he was 17 years old, his mother had a riding accident and spent the next nine years in and out of a coma before dying. Motion has said that he wrote to keep his memory of his mother alive and she was a muse of his work. In the years that followed, he read English at University College, Oxford, where he studied with W. H. Auden in weekly sessions. Motion says “I worshipped him the other side of idolatry and it was like spending an hour each week in the presence of God.” He won the university's Newdigate Prize and graduated with a first class degree.

Between 1976—1980, Motion taught English at the University of Hull and while there, at age 24, he had his first volume of poetry published. At Hull he met university Librarian and poet Philip Larkin. Motion was later appointed as one of Larkin's literary executors which would privilege Motion's role as his biographer following Larkin's death in 1985. In Larkin: a writer's life, Motion says that at no time during their nine year friendship did they discuss writing his biography and it was Larkin's long time companion Monica Jones who requested it. He reports how, as executor, he rescued many of Larkin's papers from imminent destruction following his friend's death. His 1993 biography of Philip Larkin, which won the Whitbread Prize for Biography, was responsible for bringing about a substantial revision of Larkin's reputation.

Motion was Editorial Director and Poetry Editor at Chatto & Windus (1983—89), he edited the Poetry Society's Poetry Review from 1980—1982 and succeeded Malcolm Bradbury as Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. In 2003, he became Professor of Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Twice married, he has two sons and one daughter and lives in Islington, north London.

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Motion was appointed Poet Laureate on 1 May 1999, following the death of Ted Hughes, the previous incumbent. The Nobel Prize-winning Northern Irish poet and translator Seamus Heaney had ruled himself out for the post. Breaking with the tradition of the laureate retaining the post for life, Motion stipulated that he would stay for only ten years. The yearly stipend of £200 was increased to £5,000 and he received the customary butt of sack.

He wanted to write "poems about things in the news, and commissions from people or organisations involved with ordinary life," rather than be seen a 'courtier'. So, he wrote "for the TUC about liberty, about homelessness for the Salvation Army, about bullying for ChildLine, about the foot and mouth outbreak for the Today programme, about the Paddington rail disaster, the 11 September attacks and Harry Patch for the BBC, and more recently about shell shock for the charity Combat Stress, and climate change for the song cycle I've finished for Cambridge University with Peter Maxwell Davies." In 2003, Motion wrote Regime change, a poem in protest at Invasion of Iraq from the point of view of Death walking the streets during the conflict, and in 2005, Spring Wedding in honour of the wedding of the Prince of Wales to Camilla Parker Bowles. Commissioned to write in the honour of 109 year old Harry Patch, the last surviving 'Tommy' to have fought in World War I, Motion composed a five part poem, read and received by Patch at the Bishop's Palace in Wells in 2008. As laureate, he also founded the Poetry Archive an on-line library of historic and contemporary recordings of poets reciting their own work.

Motion remarked that he found some of the duties attendant to the post of poet laureate difficult and onerous and that the appointment had been "very, very damaging to [his] work". The appointment of Motion met with criticism from some quarters. As he prepared to stand down from the job, Motion published an article in The Guardian which concluded, "To have had 10 years working as laureate has been remarkable. Sometimes it's been remarkably difficult, the laureate has to take a lot of flak, one way or another. More often it has been remarkably fulfilling. I'm glad I did it, and I'm glad I'm giving it up — especially since I mean to continue working for poetry."

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.

Post Laureateship more less

Selected Honours and Awards more less

Selected Collected Works more less

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.

For further details see links.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Andrew Motion", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0

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Search - List of Books by Andrew Motion

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Life and Career more less

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Selected Honours and Awards more less

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Poetry

Criticism

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