Sir Andrew Motion

UK Poet Laureate (1999-2009)
Biographer and Novelist
Dylan Thomas Prize Winner

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  • An Evening with Andrew Motion

Biography

“Motion is always in touch with his poetic forefathers, conscious of the historical voices he is in conversation with.” –Independent

“Lucid, brilliant, melancholic.” –The Guardian

Andrew Motion was born in London and raised in Stisted, Essex. An author of both poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, Motion has said of his own work, “I want my writing to be as clear as water. I want readers to see all the way through its surfaces into the swamp.”

Motion’s early collections of poetry include The Pleasure Steamers (1977); Dangerous Play: Poems 1974–1984 (1984), which received a John Llewellyn Rhys Prize; and Natural Causes (1987), which won a Dylan Thomas Prize. Known for narrative poems that often take up historical events in a meditative mode, Motion’s poetry manages clarity of expression while hinting at turbulent or unresolved depths. Motion’s later collections include Coming in to Land: Selected Poems 1975-2015 (2017), The Customs House (2012), The Cinder Path (2009), The Mower: New & Selected Poems (2009), and Public Property (2002), his first collection as UK Poet Laureate. His most recent, Randomly Moving Particles (2021), is direct in its emotional appeal and ambitious in its scope, all while retaining the cinematic vision and startling expression that so freshly lit the lines of his last, Essex Clay.

Motion’s collections of nonfiction prose include biographies of Thomas Wainewright (2000), of Philip Larkin (1993), and of John Keats (1997). Motion has also published autobiographical prose, including the works In the Blood (2006) and Ways of Life: On Places, Painters and Poets (2009). His novels include The Invention of Dr. Cake (2003) and Silver: Return to Treasure Island (2012).

Motion has served as editor for the Poetry Review and as editorial director and poetry editor for Chatto & Windus; he was knighted in 2009. From 1999–2009, he was Poet Laureate for the UK.

Motion is also cofounder of the Poetry Archive and former president of the Campaign to Protect Rural England. In 2015, he moved to Baltimore, Maryland, to become the Homewood Professor of the Arts at Johns Hopkins University.

Short Bio

Andrew Motion was born in London and raised in Stisted, Essex. He is the author of many books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Motion’s poetry collections include Randomly Moving Particles (2021), Coming in to Land: Selected Poems 1975-2015 (2017), The Customs House (2012), The Cinder Path (2009), and Public Property (2002), his first collection as UK Poet Laureate. Motion’s collections of nonfiction prose include biographies of Thomas Wainewright (2000), of Philip Larkin (1993), and of John Keats (1997). His novels include The Invention of Dr. Cake (2003) and Silver: Return to Treasure Island (2012). Motion has served as editor for the Poetry Review and as editorial director and poetry editor for Chatto & Windus; he was knighted in 2009. From 1999–2009, he was poet laureate for the UK. In 2015, he moved to Baltimore, Maryland, to become the Homewood Professor of the Arts at Johns Hopkins University.

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