Public Property

Description

In his first collection since being appointed Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion negotiates the very space of poetry, moving between private and public realms, pondering each from the other's borders. In the opening series of idylls he conjures the expeditionary narratives of a rural childhood, in scenes as precisely remembered as they are irretrievable. Elsewhere he reconsiders moments from the Victorian past from reticent and surprising angles, and elsewhere again he tackles distinctly contemporary themes and situations. The final section of the book contains a number of elegies and love poems, written in a variety of lyric forms, which provoke concerns that are among the most critical in poetry: What is public art? To whom do our most private sentiments belong?

Andrew Motion was born in 1952. He read English at University College, Oxford and subsequently spent two years writing about the poetry of Edward Thomas for an M. Lit. From 1976 to 1980 he taught English at the University of Hull; from 1980 to 1982 he edited the Poetry Review, and from 1982 to 1989 he was Editorial Director and Poetry Editor at Chatto & Windus. He is now Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. He is a member of the Arts Council of England and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.Andrew Motion is the author of eight books of poems, of four biographies, including the authorized life of Philip Larkin, and of critical studies of Larkin and Edward Thomas. He has been the recipient of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award, the Dylan Thomas Award and the Whitbread Prize for Biography.Andrew Motion was appointed Poet Laureate in May 1999. He lives in London with his wife and their three child

'A book that anyone who enjoys poetry will find moving and rewarding' Sunday Times