Andrew Motion

Professor Andrew Motion (born October 26, 1952) is an English poet, novelist and biographer who is the current Poet Laureate. His poems are known for the insightful way in which they explore loss and desolation.

Biography

• 1976 first published poetry
• 1976 - 1980 taught English at the University of Hull
• 1980 - 1982 edited the Poetry Review
• 1981 wins Arvon 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 as Poet Laureate for ten years only
• 2003 appointed Professor of Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London

Raised in Stisted near Braintree in Essex, he was educated at Radley College. When he was 16, his mother had a riding accident and spent the next ten years in and out of a coma before she died. During this time, he read English at University College, Oxford and studied the poetry of Edward Thomas for his MLitt. degree. 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 Llewelyn Rhys Prize and the Dylan Thomas Prize

Publications

List is not complete, needs work...

• The Pleasure Steamers (1978) poetry
• 1986 Elizabeth Bishop (Chatterton Lectures on an English Poet)
• Natural Causes (1987) poetry
• 1988 Philip Larkin (Contemporary Writers)
• The Pale Companion (1989). fiction
• 1992 Famous for the Creatures
• 1993 Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life (biography)
• 1995 The Lamberts: George, Constant and Kit (biography)
• ? Goodnestone : a sequence
• 1995 The Price of Everything
• Salt Water (1997) poetry
• 1998 Keats (biography)
• 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)
• 2002 Public Property (poetry)
• 2003 The Invention of Dr Cake

Dates unclear...

• Independence
• 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 (Paperback)

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(see Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon) - at BBC.

Preceded by: Ted Hughes

British Poet Laureate

Succeeded by: