Andrew Motion

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

Early life and education

Raised in Stisted near Braintree in Essex, he was educated at Radley College. 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 she died. In the years that followed, he read English at University College, Oxford, and studied the poetry of Edward Thomas for his MLitt. degree. In 1975, while an undergraduate, he won the university's Newdigate Prize. Motion has said that he tried to keep his memory of his mother alive through poetry.

Andrew Motion is a member of the Arts Council of England and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Beside the prizes mentioned above, he has won the Arvon/Observer Prize, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the Dylan Thomas Prize. He is currently Professor of Creative Writing at Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London.

His 1993 biography of Philip Larkin was responsible for bringing about a substantial revision of Larkin's reputation.

Poet laureate

Motion was appointed Poet Laureate on 1 May 1999, following the death of Ted Hughes, the previous incumbent. Breaking with the tradition of the laureate retaining the post for life with a yearly stipend of £200 and a "butt of canary wine"^[1], Motion stipulated that he would hold the post for only ten years. He received an increased yearly fee of £5,000. The appointment of Motion met with criticism from some quarters^[who?][2]. The Nobel Prize-winning Northern Irish poet and translator Seamus Heaney ruled himself out for the post. 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".^[3]. 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." ^[4]

Motion discussed the Laureateship's effects on his writing in an interview in The Creative Environments: Authors at Work, ed. Ceri Sullivan and Graeme Harper (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2009).

Carol Ann Duffy succeeded him as Poet Laureate on 1 May 2009. 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.

Other works

In 2003, Motion wrote a poem in protest at Invasion of Iraq called "Regime Change"; the poem is told from the third person point of view, showing a speech made by Death in the streets of Iraq.^[5]

In 2005 he helped to bring online The Poetry Archive containing both historic and contemporary recordings of poets reciting their own work. In April of that same year he wrote "Spring Wedding" in honour of the wedding of the Prince of Wales to Camilla Parker Bowles.

In February 2008 he was commissioned to write a poem in the honour of Harry Patch, who was the last surviving Tommy to have fought in World War I. It was first read at a special event at the Bishop's Palace in Wells where it was received by Harry Patch.^[6]

In July 2008 he was appointed to the position of Chairman of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.^[7]

He was the voiceover [1] for a short film/documentary called "A Name Is A Name" which is currently going to be released in autumn 2009 on television.

Honours

He was knighted in the 2009 Birthday Honours.^[8][9]

Charity Involvement

He is a Vice President of the Friends of the British Library, a charity which provides funding support to the British Library.^[10]

Timeline

• 1975: won the Newdigate prize for Oxford undergraduate poetry
• 1976: further poetry published
• 1976 – 1980: taught English at the University of Hull
• 1980 – 1982: edited the Poetry Review
• 1981: wins Arvon Foundation's International Poetry Competition with "The Letter"
• 1982: edits, with Blake Morrison, the Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry
• 1982 – 1989: Editorial Director and Poetry Editor at Chatto & Windus
• 1986: The Lamberts wins the Somerset Maugham Award
• 1989: Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia
• 1994: Philip Larkin: A Writer’s Life wins the Whitbread Prize for Biography
• 1999: appointed Poet Laureate for ten years only
• 2003: appointed Professor of Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London

Publications

Note: this list is not complete

• 1972 Goodnestone: a sequence (a series of 18 untitled poems)
• 1978 The Pleasure Steamers – poetry
• 1981 Independence – poetry
• 1986 Elizabeth Bishop (Chatterton Lectures on an English Poet)
• 1987 Natural Causes – poetry
• 1988 Philip Larkin (Contemporary Writers)
• 1989 The Pale Companion – fiction
• 1992 Famous for the Creatures
• 1993 Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life (biography)
• 1995 The Lamberts: George, Constant and Kit (biography)
• 1995 The Price of Everything
• 1997 Salt Water – poetry
• 1998 Keats (biography) ISBN 9780226542409
• 1998 Take 20
• 1998 Sarah Raphael: Strip!
• 1999 Selected Poems 1976-1997
• 1999 Babel
• 2000 Wainewright the Poisoner: The Confessions of Thomas Griffiths Wainewright (biographical novel) ISBN 9780226542447
• 2002 Public Property (poetry)
• 2003 The Invention of Dr Cake
• 2005 Spring Wedding (poem in honour of the wedding of the Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker Bowles)
• 2006 "In the Blood" (memoirs of childhood)
• 2007 The Five Acts of Harry Patch (poetry)

Dates unclear:

• Secret narratives
• Dangerous play: poems, 1974-1984
• Love in a life
• Firsthand

Edited works / Introductions:

• Thomas Hardy: Selected Poems (Everyman Library) (Editor)
• 1994 New Writing 3 by Andrew Motion, Candice Rodd (Editor) (reprinted '94)
• 1981 Poetry of Edward Thomas
• Verses of the Poets Laureate: From John Dryden to Andrew Motion by Hilary Laurie (Compiler), Andrew Motion (Introduction) (Paperback - September 1999)
• 1982 The Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry by Ed. Blake Morrison and Andrew Motion
• 1981 Selected Poems: William Barnes (Penguin Classics) Andrew Motion (Editor)
• Here to Eternity: An Anthology of Poetry by Andrew Motion (Editor)
• Paper Scissors Stone: New Writing from the MA in Creative Writing at UEA by Andrew Motion (Introduction) (Paperback)
• May Anthology 2002 Poetry and Prose by Andrew Motion (Editor), Nick Cave (Editor) (Paperback)
• The Creative Writing Coursebook: Forty Authors Share Advice and Exercises for Fiction & Poetry by Julia Bell (Editor), Andrew Motion (Foreword)
• The Mays
• 2006 Collins Rhyming Dictionary, Andrew Motion (Foreword)

References

External links

• A chapter from Keats, about John Keats, Fanny Brawne, and his poem for her, "Bright Star."
• [2] Review of Motion's The Mower: New & Selected Poems at The Critical Flame.
• An Elegy to HM Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother (see Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon)—at BBC News Online.
• Arvon Foundation International Poetry Competition
• Andrew Motion at Contemporary Writers
• Andrew Motion at the Internet Movie Database