'We could do with a day like yesterday every day in our libraries !!!' Julie Barkway, Wirral Libraries

NEW BOOKS
Andrew Motion's eagerly awaited sequel to the classic Treasure Island, Silver  ~  Return to Treasure Island, now out.

BOOKTRACK VERSION OUT ON WED 18 APR
Booktrack is a revolutionary new technology that is launching in the UK for the first time in partnership with Random House and the new title Silver  ~  Return to Treasure Island.

Booktrack creates synchronized soundtracks for e-books that automatically matches music, sound effects and ambient sound to your reading speed to create an immersive reading experience.

"I hope that this groundbreaking digital format encourages new readers (and old) to experience narrative in an exciting and innovative way” Andrew Motion

'Like Stevenson, Motion has achieved that very difficult thing: a children's novel that works even better for adults. Look to your laurels, Rowling.' The Times

‘a vastly entertaining novel, with fine action scenes, which serves as an act of homage to Stevenson. He writes with much of Stevenson’s own lucid intelligence, power of invention and generosity of spirit.. Other have imitated Stevenson before now: Arthur Quiller-Couch, for instance, wrote the last chapters of the novel, St Ives, which was one of those Stevenson left unfinished, and did it well. Motion’s undertaking was perhaps a still bolder one, and, despite any reservations one may have regarding the lack of economy in structure and writing, may be judged a success.’ The Scotsman

‘The pace of Silver as an old-fashioned page-turner is fast, a required attribute for a children’s novel. It whips along like a tea clipper in a fair breeze so that at the same time as wanting to know the end, the reader doesn’t really want the story to finish.Though the two authors were born almost a century apart, in what is essentially an old-style ripping yarn, it is sometimes hard to perceive the join between their books. In this, Silver does credit to both Andrew Motion and Robert Louis Stevenson.’ 5/5 Martin Newell Sunday Express

Laurels and Donkeys is a profoundly moving sequence of war poems referring to 20th - and 21st-century conflicts that have involved British forces: among them, the First World War, the Second World War, the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan. Currently out of print but to be re-published by Faber.

THE POETRY ARCHIVE
The Poetry Archive is open all hours! www.poetryarchive.org 

CURRENT TITLES
SILVER  ~  RETURN TO TREASURE ISLAND (Jonathan Cape, 15 Mar) 
LAURELS AND DONKEYS 
THE CINDER PATH (Faber) poems
WAYS OF LIFE: On Places, Painters and Poets (Faber) new collection of essays
IN THE BLOOD A Memoir of my Childhood (Faber)‘The most moving and exquisitely written account of childhood loss I have ever read … a passionate account of a man’s love for his parents and for the countryside in which he grew up … In the Blood will always be Andrew Motion’s elegy to his mother. For those of us fortunate enough to read this superlative memoir, it’s a celebration of mothers everywhere.’ Charlie Lee-Potter, Independent on Sunday

extracts from...

BETTER LIFE

You think I must be asleep when you sit at my bedside
and well might I be what with the late afternoon hush
now the other residents have all retired to their rooms
but no I am not asleep although you could say uncertain
whether I am myself alone or the sum of those I remember
whose voices have become mine along with their destination.

*

I can say this at least. I was born a Brixham girl and dad’s ship
was the pride of the fleet so every day when they came ashore
I had my pick of the mackerel in their beautiful shiny blue suits.
But then again I was stationed on the flying boats. Wasn’t that
a lovely time? The way they came in very low over the harbour
and the deep green water lifted up to greet them or seemed to. 

*

Ask yourself this question. Is it only when you become like me
that you will hear what I have to tell you? Make your mind up.

*

Here’s me when we were in Llandudno on our honeymoon.
I painted my toenails red. If you cared to look you could see 
I still have my toenails red. I do this by myself with no help.
And that’s me dancing round the house – it was the fresh air
kept me going, without a single brown penny in my purse.

© Andrew Motion

HOLY ISLAND

I am behind you on the mainland, leaning
on your shoulder and pointing with one arm
in front of your face at weightless cinders
which are ravens blustering above the island.

Boulder clay on the outcrops, and beaches
dotted and dashed with coal dust. Guillemots
whitening the cliff face. Small orchids definitely
still evolving in a downpour of Arctic sunlight.

How many years are there left to cross over
and show you things themselves, not my idea
of things? Thirty, if I live to the age of my father.
I cannot explain why I have left it as late as this.

Your black hair blows into my eyes but I can see
everything moving fast now. Weather polishes
the silver fields ahead; the ravens swoop down
and settle among the gorgeous pages of the gospels.

© Andrew Motion