Andrew Motion has been close to the centres of British poetry for over fifty years.Sleeping on Islands is his clear-sighted and open-hearted account of this remarkable career. It takes us from scenes of a teenage home-life coloured by tragedy and silence - where writing was as much a refuge as an assertion - to the excruciations of early public appearances, to the decade he spent as Poet Laureate, promoting and ensuring the central place of poetry in a nat...

Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life won the Whitbread Award for Biography in 1993 and was championed as 'an exemplary biography of its kind' ( The Times). With a new introduction written by the author, this edition offers an engrossing portrait of one of the twentieth century's most popular, and most private, poets.'There will be other lives of Larkin, but Motion's, like Forster's of Dickens, will always have a special place.' John Carey, Sunday Times'...

This comprehensive edition draws on Andrew Motion's distinguished body of work from Secret Narratives (1983) to his most recent volume, Randomly Moving Particles (2020), and includes a substantial selection of new and previously uncollected poems.Certain preoccupations unite the book, which from first to last is particularly concerned with the ways in which our lives are shaped by loss - by wars, by accidents, by the erosion of time and by grief. Motion is an ener...

From the former Poet Laureate, a remarkable contemplation of departure and return.Andrew Motion's new collection gives a moving account of the friction and interplay between past and present. In the opening elegies for friends and former versions of the self, and in the long title sequence which completes the book, he explores the ways in which regrets compete with hope, and the appetite for life is always a prey to hard facts of mortality. The energy and reach of ...

“Full of big themes such as courage, greed, loyalty and obsession, The New World is still an adventure story first and foremost. . . . An entertaining homage that is deeply felt and sincere.” —The Guardian (UK)Washed ashore after escaping Treasure Island, young Jim Hawkins and his companion Natty find themselves stranded on the Gulf Coast of Texas. Their ship, the Nightingale, has been destroyed, and besides one other crew member, they ar...

The breathtaking new novel about unexpected adventure from Andrew Motion, internationally acclaimed author of Silver.Washed ashore after a harrowing shipwreck, English seafarers Jim and Natty find themselves stranded on the Gulf Coast in Texas. Their ship, the Nightingale, has been destroyed, and to Jim and Natty's horror, only one other survivor remains. But the shocked and grief-stricken duo soon realizes they're not all alone on the beach. When a band of...

Keats is the first major biography of this tragic hero of romanticism for some thirty years, and it differs from its predecessors in important respects. The outline of the story is well known - has become, in fact, the stuff of legend: the archetypal life of the tortured genius, critically spurned and dying young.What Andrew Motion brings to bear on the subject is a deep understanding of how Keats fitted into the intellectual and political life of his time. Important frien...

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 tech...

Poetry by Heart - based on the hugely successful nationwide schools competition, 200 magical poems to learn by heart'The poems we learn stay with us for the rest of our lives. They become personal and invaluable, and what's more they are free gifts - there for the taking' Simon ArmitageTwo years ago former Poet Laureate Andrew Motion had the idea of setting up Poetry by Heart - a nationwide annual competition for secondary schools which asked contestants to learn t...

'A bald summary does no justice to the subtlety and exceptional lucidity of a book which turns the bland, familiar, intrinsically worthy stuff of so many fictional family sagas into a biographical triumph.' Observer'Motion has given us an exemplary piece of research, and a comparison of three eras that is of compelling interest, not least in showing what damage one generation does to the next.' Sunday Times'The story of the three Lamberts is as cruel and h...

From England’s former Poet Laureate, a collection of selected poetry spanning his celebrated career, presented for the first time by an American publisherAndrew Motion has said, “I want my writing to be as clear as water. I want readers to see all the way through its surfaces into the swamp." Though the territory of his exploration may be murky and mired—the front lines of war, political entanglements, romantic longing, and human suffering—Motion’s conversational tone and lyrical s...

Andrew Motion's expansive new collection is built around two long poems that form its opening and close. The title poem, in a kaleidoscope of compelling scenes, engages with subjects that include migration, placement, loss, space exploration and current British and American politics. The more straightforwardly narrative poem, 'How Do the Dead Walk', while reaching back to immemorial stories of brutality, addresses issues of contemporary violence. The book is direct in its emotional appeal,...