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 want hats
But I can't and don't ever want to write bell-yanking confetti-tossing hat-throwing poems.
writing way poet
But in a lot of ways my poems are very conventional, and it's no big deal for me to write a poem in either free verse or strict form; modern poets can, and do, do both.
writing done way
I am writing more than I have ever done. My life has come back to me in the most extraordinary way.
writing two tea
I get up at 5.30am, sluice myself and have two Weetabix and some mint tea, before starting to write by 6am.
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.
dream writing way
I write between 5.30am and 9.00. That way, I hope I carry over something from my dream time.
carry dream hope time
I write between 5.30am and 9.00. That way, I hope I carry over something from my dream time.
died extremely news seemed
It is extremely desolating news that he should have died when he was only 68 and always seemed so much younger,
allowed attention hard looked paying stop
When you're being looked at very hard, it's very hard to look back. And that made me stop paying attention to the world in a way that allowed me then to write about it.
centre life people poetry speaking stuff
Poetry is at the centre of my life, too, emotionally speaking, and intellectually speaking - it's just that I'm one of those people who enjoy doing other stuff as well.
ideals keats poems says wants
Keats writes better about poems than anybody I've ever read. The things that he says about what he wants his own poems to be are the ideals that I share.
absolutely believe keats means proved saying tells until
When Keats says: 'Axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses', what he means is that we don't necessarily believe what a poem is saying if it comes out and tells us in an absolutely head-on, in-your-face way; we only believe it to be true if we feel it to be true.
history human people poetry reading time
More people are reading poetry now than at any time in the history of the human race.
knows mind nature obligation poems poetry resist side wish work written
I wish I'd been better able to resist the sense of obligation to write some of the poems I did. It's in the nature of commissioned work to be written too much from the side of your mind that knows what it's doing, which dries up the poetry.