The Price of Everything

This volume brings together two long poems. 'Lines of Desire' tells the story of an individual in crisis, under pressure from past and present events. 'Joe Soap' combines narrative and lyric forms to trace a historical pattern reaching from the First World War to contemporary apocalypse. Both are remarkable additions to an important body of work.



Andrew Motion was Poet Laureate from 1999 to 2009; he is Professor of Creative Writing at Royal Holloway College, University of London, and co-founder of the online Poetry Archive. He has received numerous awards for his poetry, and has published four celebrated biographies. His group study

The Lamberts won the Somerset Maugham Award and his authorised life of Philip Larkin won the Whitbread Prize for Biography. Andrew Motion's novella

The Invention of Dr Cake (2003) was described as 'amazingly clever' by the

Irish Times and praised for 'brilliant and almost hallucinatory vividness' by the

Sunday Telegraph. His memoir,

In the Blood (2006), was described as 'the most moving and exquisitely written account of childhood loss I have ever read' in the

Independent on Sunday. His most recent collection of poems,

The Cinder Path (2009), was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry. Andrew Motion was knighted for his services to poetry in 2009.