photo © Adam Cluer, Eltham College

NEW BOOKS
Andrew Motion's eagerly awaited sequel to the classic Treasure Island, Silver (Jonathan Cape), is out in Apr'12.

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.

'SHORTLISTED
Andrew Motion's The Cinder Path (Faber) was shortlisted for The Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry, judged this year by Imtiaz Dharker, Tim Supple and Jo Shapcott.

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

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

CURRENT TITLES
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

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