Andrew Motion - Biography & books - www.andrewmotion.co.uk

Home

Press

Dates

Biog. & Books

Gallery

Contact

UK Touring

BIOGRAPHY

photo credit: Antonio Olmos - enlargements: gallery

Andrew Motion was born in 1952. He read English at University College, Oxford and subsequently spent two years writing about the poetry of Edward Thomas for an M. Litt. From 1976 to 1980 he taught English at the University of Hull; from 1980 to 1982 he edited the Poetry Review and from 1982 to 1989 he was Editorial Director and Poetry Editor at Chatto & Windus. He is now Professor of Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and lives in London. He was knighted for his services to literature in 2009.

Sir Andrew is a council member of the Advertising Standards Authority and, since last July, Chairman of the Museums, Libraries & Archives Council.

Andrew Motion was Poet Laureate from 1999 until 2009.

His new collection of poems is The Cinder Path (Faber) and Ways of Life: Places, Painters and Poets (Faber) is his latest collection of essays.

BOOKS

Andrew Motion's publications include those listed below. For more information - see links below.

Autobiography

In the Blood: A Memoir of my Childhood Faber and Faber, Sept 2006

Poetry

Goodnestone: A Sequence Workshop Press, 1972

Inland Cygnet Press, 1976

The Pleasure Steamers Sycamore Press, 1977

The Poetry of Edward Thomas Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980

Independence Salamander Press, 1981

Philip Larkin Methuen, 1982

Secret Narratives Salamander Press, 1983

Dangerous Play: Poems 1974-1984 Salamander Press / Penguin, 1984

Natural Causes Chatto & Windus, 1987

Two Poems Words, 1988

Love in a Life Faber and Faber, 1991

Selected Poems by Thomas Hardy (editor) Dent, 1994

The Price of Everything Faber and Faber, 1994

Penguin Modern Poets: Volume 11 (Michael Donaghy, Andrew Motion, Hugo Williams) Penguin, 1997

Salt Water Faber and Faber, 1997

Selected Poems 1976-1997 Faber and Faber, 1998

John Keats: Poems Selected by Andrew Motion Faber and Faber, 2000

A Long Story The Old School Press, 2001 www.theoldschoolpress.com

Here to Eternity: An Anthology of Poetry (editor) Faber and Faber, 2001

Public Property Faber and Faber, 2002

First World War Poems (editor) Faber and Faber, 2003

Biography

Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life Faber and Faber, 1993

The Lamberts: George, Constant and Kit Chatto & Windus, 1986

Keats: A Biography Faber and Faber, 1997

Wainewright the Poisoner Faber and Faber, 2000

Fiction

The Invention of Dr Cake Faber and Faber, 2003

LINKS etc.

Faber & Faber - go to www.faber.co.uk and search for 'Andrew Motion'.

Guardian Unlimited - try poems / extracts first... if that fails go to http://books.guardian.co.uk and search for 'Andrew Motion'

Quote

'My poems are the product of a relationship between a side of my mind which is conscious, alert, educated and manipulative, and a side which is as murky as a primaeval swamp. I can't predict when this relationship will flower. If I try to goad it into existence I merely engage with one side of my mind or the other, and the poem suffers.

I want my writing to be as clear as water. No ornate language; very few obvious tricks. I want readers to be able to see all the way down through its surfaces into the swamp. I want them to feel they're in a world they thought they knew, but which turns out to be stranger, more charged, more disturbed than they realised. In truth, creating this world is a more theatrical operation than the writing admits, and it's this discretion about strong feeling, and strong feeling itself, which keeps drawing me back to the writers I most admire: Wordsworth, Edward Thomas, Philip Larkin.'

Bookings / info. contact: Adrian Mealing tel/fax: +44 (0) 1684 540366 web: www.uktouring.org.uk

Press contact: Jim Howden tel: +44 (0)1568 620515 e-mail: jim@uktouring.org.uk