Author

I shall try to write a poem that is about the moment but doesn't betray things that are true to me as a poet.

I've found a different way to scent the air: already it's a by-word for despair.

You see the names of places roundabout? They're mine now, and I've turned them inside out.

But Wordsworth is the poet I admire above all others.

I'm not much given to making shamanistic remarks about all this, but I'm a great believer in the dream life. If I can carry without spilling whatever it is that drips into my head in the night to my desk, then that's valuable.

From Andrew Motion

If I were to die thinking that I'd written three poems that people might read after me, I would feel that I hadn't lived in vain. Great poets might expect the whole body of their work, but most of us - well, I would settle for a handful.

From Andrew Motion

I've always thought that the balance between the side of my mind that knows what it is doing and the side that really hasn't got a clue has to be carefully maintained because if you write too knowingly then you get chilly, and if you write too unknowingly you write bollocks that nobody else can understand.

From Andrew Motion

Well, it's a badge of honour for any self-respecting poet to be criticized by Auberon Waugh. But in a lot of ways my poems are very conventional, and it's no big deal for me to write a poem in either free verse or strict form; modern poets can, and do, do both.

From Andrew Motion

But in a lot of ways my poems are very conventional, and it's no big deal for me to write a poem in either free verse or strict form; modern poets can, and do, do both.

From Andrew Motion

But I can't and don't ever want to write bell-yanking confetti-tossing hat-throwing poems.

From Andrew Motion

Andrew Motion

Notable Quotes

Authors with Similar Views

Rita Dove

Mary Oliver

Billy Collins

Mark Strand

Siri Hustvedt

Authors with Opposing Views

Antonin Artaud

Bram Stoker

Carli Lloyd

Charles Olson

Damon Albarn