Selected Poems of Andrew Motion

In this book Andrew Motion has made his own choice from his outstandingly fine and varied body of work. Dramatic monologues, elegies, poems of social and political observation, love lyrics - all are part of this important poet's repertoire. Andrew Motion's concern for the extremes of human experience and the artistic integrity that insists on his addressing the reader with maximum clarity and impact are consistent features of a career otherwise remarkable for its imaginative range and technical versatility.



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.