Andrew Motion
Andrew Motion
Sir Andrew Motion, FRSLis an English poet, novelist, and biographer, who was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1999 to 2009. During the period of his laureateship, Motion founded the Poetry Archive, an online resource of poems and audio recordings of poets reading their own work. In 2012, he became President of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, taking over from Bill Bryson...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth26 October 1952
writing trying moments
I shall try to write a poem that is about the moment but doesn't betray things that are true to me as a poet.
long people hell
Like a lot of people, for a long time I thought that the road to hell is paved with bad sequels.
rap should-have choices
While also, importantly, not wanting to dumb it down or pretend the days of 'difficult' poetry are over, because we live in a pluralist culture and there's room for 'difficult' poetry alongside rap and everything else. And poetry won't be for everyone, but everyone should have the choice.
dream writing way
I write between 5.30am and 9.00. That way, I hope I carry over something from my dream time.
people feelings want
I don't want my poems to be sentimental, though I do acknowledge that sentiment is probably rather under-reported in a lot of people's feelings a lot of the time.
heart emotional forget
Poems are a hotline to our hearts, and we forget this emotional power at our peril
wordsworth poet admire
But Wordsworth is the poet I admire above all others.
I get up at 5.30am, sluice myself and have two Weetabix and some mint tea, before starting to write by 6am.
charming immense kindness man side
He was a man of immense charm, affability and kindness with no side to him.
beauty buy cheap figure gallery great intrinsic national natural picture portrait suggestive witty
Broodingly suggestive of Donne's intellectual figure as well as his witty sensuality, it is also a picture of great intrinsic beauty and the bewitching evocation of an age. The National Portrait Gallery is its natural home. The picture is cheap at the price, and if we don't buy it someone else will.
book deeply literature stricken written
This is a book written by someone obsessed, stricken and deeply loving. There is nothing like it in literature.
hear interests offer poems poets rights tone unique
Actors may (or may not) read poems well, but poets have unique rights to their work, and unique insights and interests to offer as we hear their idiom, pacing, tone and emphases,
instant lingering readings
The readings are at once instant in their appeal, and lingering in their impact.
bombs explains fear gust hills include light neither nor quite sudden tonight
Each sudden gust of light explains itselfas flames, but neither they, nor even bombs redoubled on the hills tonight can quite include me in their fear (Leaving Belfast)