On her Majesty’s Secret Service:
What’s a poet doing on her majesty’s (not so secret) service? Dozens of countries still maintain the vaguely antiquated tradition of having
a Poet Laureate, but what these globe-
trotting men of verse do with their time remains somewhat shrouded in mystery. One of these very rare specimens, British poet laureate Andrew Motion, recently alighted in St. Louis to speak with Washington University students and to share his art as a visiting writer in the English department. In a series of public talks, and an informal interview, Cadenza had a chance to question the man about his work, his life, and his intriguing occupation.
As a formal speaker and reader, Motion provides an impressive presence. His tall frame tenses and relaxes with the pitch of his words, his face almost coloring with emotion. After hearing him speak, his listeners tend to wander away awed and somewhat dazed, commenting on his “charm,” his clarity, and the overall humility of his demeanor. As a conversationalist, he is impressively modest, attired for an interview in loafers and a t-shirt, quickly admitting that he “sort of mumbles.” Above all, Motion distinguishes himself as personal, both in his poetry and in his interaction with the public. As an interviewee he is straightforward, pensive, and anything but evasive, offering precious insights into the life that shaped and shapes his work.
Motion’s childhood, spent in a small town outside of London, appears frequently in his poems. As he puts it, “Childhood is the colorful template on which adult life is based.” His personal experience combines elements of both nostalgia and tragedy; in one particularly harrowing incident, his mother was severely injured in a riding accident that left her comatose and near death for three years, after which she “very, very slowly returned toward a sort of resemblance of life, and began to talk again a little bit.” References to the accident throughout his work are inevitably imbued with some of the other major themes of Motion’s work: guilt, death and fear thereof, and nostalgia for people lost in our past.
“I’m very struck by how those … are much indeed a part of my work, in particular childhood, death and love; I’m not really sure what else there is, exactly.” says Motion.
Motion spent much of his young life at a religious boys’ school, where he was very involved in his faith, but in what he described as a “compulsory, non-questioning ” sort of way. His father’s position in the army affected both his young personality and many of his poems, where the echoes of war, and the “constant comparison” he made between his and his father’s very distinct lives reverberate.
Educated at Oxford University, Motion received numerous accolades and awards for his work, including
the Newdigate Prize for Poetry. Later he became a lecturer at Hull University, then more recently a professor of creative writing at East Anglia University, and finally, as we find him today, Poet Laureate of Great Britain.
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was created…Dryden [1631-1700, the first of the great English neoclassical poets, renowned for translations of Ovid and Chaucer] was made one…and his job was basically to write poems that involved significant events in the civic life, then there are poems about…marriages and battles and that kind of stuff. Since then, there have been these 19 or 20 Poet Laureates, some of which have been very distinguished and interesting such as Tennyson, and some of which have been frankly awful. Not to say that they were awful poets, but that they interpreted so narrowly what everyone was looking at at the time….which I have no wish to do, I mean, I am a royalist, but I’m not the slightest bit interested in interpreting the world in a merely sycophantic way.” His interpretation of the role is geared towards interpreting things in his country through a writer’s perspective and, when the spirit strikes him, writing about events of national interest.
Part of Motion’s job also involves being a sort of cultural minister, and trying to connect the average citizen with the experience of poetry. His projects include but are not limited to increasing funding for creative arts in the national curriculum, reading his works at public events, visiting schools, lobbying for the charity “Childline” and generally trying “to make poetry a part of everyday life.” He says, “I want to write poems that can take their place in everyday life. And, as far as I’m concerned, I feel that poems are a part of everyday life.”
Motion’s dedication to personal truth through his work in turn encourages more people to find a deeper understanding of both the lofty and the colloquial through poetry. Motion’s personal humility and his poems themselves are testimony to the feasibility of these aspirations. His newest book, Public Property, released last week, addresses the public nature of his position as Laureate while remaining true to the ideals of the man that
is Andrew Motion. This and other works are available through Faber and Faber Unlimited.
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