Andrew Motion

Andrew Motion is an English poet, and the UK Poet Laureate from 1999 to 2009. He is celebrated both for his own poetry of landscape and memory and for major editorial and biographical work, and his massive Penguin Book of Elegy ranges from ancient lament to contemporary verse, making his name a fixture of elegy and loss.

Motion was Professor of Creative Writing at Royal Holloway and founded the Poetry Archive. His biography of Philip Larkin and his memoir In the Blood further established the range of his writing, and he has received the Whitbread Award and was knighted for services to poetry.