Andrew Motion Books

Andrew Motion's prose memoir In the Blood (2006) was widely acclaimed, praised as an act of magical retrieval and a hymn to familial love.

Blending scholarly insight with a vibrant flair, this anthology offers a profound exploration of literature's emotional impact. It presents a collection that is both fascinating and essential, showcasing a diverse range of voices and perspectives. The book serves as a significant educational experience, inviting readers to engage deeply with its themes and narratives.

Written from a teenage child's point of view, Motion captures the pathos and puzzlement of childhood with great clarity of expression and freshness of memory.

'Families are societies in miniature.' The Lamberts: George, Constant and Kit won a Somerset Maugham Award in 1987. A lesson in the fragility of fame, it tells the tragic story of three generations: George, one of Australia's leading painters; his talented composer-conductor son Constant; and grandson Kit, who managed the pop group The Who. 'Motion's project is not just to tell the story of passing generations, which he does very readably and well, but necessarily also to describe and evaluate aspects of English culture - revivalist painting, classical music in the Twenties and Thirties, the foundation of a native ballet, pop music in the Sixties - which he does with considerable confidence and resource.' London Review of Books 'The story of the three Lamberts is as cruel and horrifying as any Greek tragedy... Its portrayal of the way in which the Lamberts instinctively yet unintentionally assisted in the destruction of their own offspring makes for truly compulsive reading.' Harpers and Queen 'An exemplary piece of research' (Sunday Times). 'A biographical triumph.' Observer

Elegy is among the world's oldest forms of a continuous poetic tradition which stretches back beyond the time of Virgil and Horace to Ancient Greece, speaking eloquently and movingly of the experience of loss and the yearning for consolation. In perhaps the purest instance of art's fundamental 'impulse to preserve' (Philip Larkin), it gives shape and meaning to memories too painful to contemplate for long, and answers our desire to fix in words what would otherwise slip our grasp.In The Penguin Book of Elegy , Andrew Motion and Stephen Regan trace the history of this tradition, selecting the best and most significant poems and poets from the Classical roots of elegy, and from its Renaissance revival down to the present day. They show how this remarkably resilient and versatile form has continued to adapt itself even as society and religious belief have shifted around it, with striking achievements in the work of twentieth- and twenty-first-century poets as different as Marianne Moore, Dylan Thomas, Denise Riley and Gwendolyn Brooks.The result is the only comprehensive anthology of its kind now available in the English language. The Penguin Book of Elegy is itself a work of preservation - and a profound and moving catalogue of the fundamentally human urges to remember and honour the dead, and give comfort to those who survive them.

Featuring a diverse range of poetry, this collection showcases the work of British poet laureate Andrew Motion, marking his debut for American audiences. Selected by Motion, the poems include elegies, sonnets, and pieces reflecting on social and political themes, as well as candid explorations of childhood, post-war England, and nature. Spanning three decades, the anthology highlights Motion's unique voice and rich contributions to contemporary poetry.

First published in 1997, Keats was the first major biography of this tragic hero of Romanticism for some thirty years, and it differs from its predecessors in important respects. Most importantly, Andrew Motion - himself a distinguished poet and former poet laureate - demonstrates how the poems continue to exert their power.

Motion - affectionate but undeceived about the man's frailties, a diligent researcher and a deft reader of poetry - has written an equally exemplary 'Life' of him.' Peter Conrad, Observer'Honest but not prurient, critical but also compassionate, Motion's book could not be bettered.' Alan Bennett, London Review of Books

From the Orford Merman of the title poem, to an elegy written for a friend who died on the Marchioness, to the vivid prose meditation of the second part, written when Andrew Motion retraced the voyage that John Keats made by sea from London to Naples in the autumn of 1820, the book insistently and brilliantly elaborates images of water.

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.