Facebook Twitter Instagram
    Trending
    • Interview: Lewis Thompson, VP Sport
    • En Garde!
    • BUWRU Still on Top
    • Hidden Histories: With The Archaeology Society
    • Beabadoobee Concert Review: Welcome to Beatopia
    • Taylor Swift: Midnights Review – The Stories of 13 Sleepless Nights
    • Claire Concert Review: Claire Cottrill in Concert!
    • Is There Hope For Percy Jackson?
    Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube Flickr
    Seren
    • News & Politics
      1. Local News
      2. UK News
      3. Uni News
      4. World News
      5. Politics
      6. Comment
      7. Business
      Featured

      SABB Election: The Full Result Breakdown

      By Emily ReadMarch 20, 20210
      Recent

      Redevelopment plans and the culture of Bangor

      October 28, 2022

      Immediate closure of Menai Bridge following reports of structural integrity issues

      October 28, 2022

      Racial abuse victim calls for harsher sentencing following nightclub assault

      October 28, 2022
    • Arts & Culture
      1. Books
      2. Games
      3. Film
      4. Music
      5. TV
      6. Creative Corner
      Featured

      Bangor alumni podcast earns Hollywood cameo & BBC features

      By Amelia SmithMarch 7, 20210
      Recent

      Beabadoobee Concert Review: Welcome to Beatopia

      October 29, 2022

      Taylor Swift: Midnights Review – The Stories of 13 Sleepless Nights

      October 29, 2022

      Claire Concert Review: Claire Cottrill in Concert!

      October 29, 2022
    • Lifestyle
      1. Fashion
      2. Food and Drink
      3. Social
      4. Health and Beauty
      5. Travel
      Featured

      Country Highlight: The Netherlands

      By Emily ShoultsMay 6, 20220
      Recent

      Gilmore Garms

      October 28, 2022

      Fleeces and Funk

      October 28, 2022

      Cheerleading: Getting your kit together

      October 28, 2022
    • Discovery
      1. Science
      2. Environment
      3. History
      4. International
      Featured

      Brewing up a Storm: The History of Guinness

      By Emily ReadMarch 20, 20210
      Recent

      North Wales Ramblings

      October 28, 2022

      Hamza Yassin: The Hard Work That Is Making Luck Happen

      October 28, 2022

      Student’s Union Hosts Repair Cafe for Sustainability Awareness Week

      October 28, 2022
    • Sport
      1. Varsity 2019
      2. Varsity 2018
      3. Varsity 2017
      4. Varsity 2016
      5. Varsity 2015
      6. Varsity 2014
      7. Varsity 2013
        • Varsity 2013 Results
        • Varsity 2013 – In tweets
      Featured

      Bangor Muddogs’ American Football: a young woman finding her place

      By Jade HillMarch 23, 20210
      Recent

      Interview: Lewis Thompson, VP Sport

      October 29, 2022

      En Garde!

      October 29, 2022

      BUWRU Still on Top

      October 29, 2022
    • Students’ Union
      1. Union News
      2. Societies
      3. Volunteering
      4. Clubs
      Featured

      INTERVIEW: Be Period Positive

      By Caroline CartmillMarch 17, 20210
      Recent

      Interview: Lewis Thompson, VP Sport

      October 29, 2022

      En Garde!

      October 29, 2022

      BUWRU Still on Top

      October 29, 2022
    • Issues
      • Current Issue
      • This year’s issues
      • Last year’s issues
      • Seren Archive
      • Seren Teams
    Seren
    Home»Featured»Poetry In Motion
    Featured

    Poetry In Motion

    Rosie MacLeodBy Rosie MacLeodDecember 21, 2012Updated:January 25, 20132 Comments6 Mins Read
    Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email
    Share
    Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Email

    Last weekend Seren’s Deputy Editor, Rosie, went to hear Andrew Motion give a reading in Islington, London. Inspired, she’s put together a full feature on the great poet’s lifetime of work.

    Andrew Motion is a serious man, yet as his audience gathers he remarks how ideally he’d like his ‘Selected Works’ to consist ‘of about six poems’. He served as the poet Laureate between 1999 and 2009. He inherited the title from Ted Hughes and was succeeded by Carol Ann Duffy, a staple GCSE classroom favourite. His work is conspicuously punctuated with rural references, a product of his countryside childhood. As if being Ted Hughes’ heir was not enough, he succeeded American writer Bill Bryson as the President for the Society for the Protection of Rural England.

    “I’m going to read you a long poem, but you’re stuck in here now” he jokes, yet still with his prevailing air of solemnity. It is about his mother, an “elegy for her”. When Motion was “about sixteen” his mother suffered a horse riding accident, requiring her to undergo major surgery on her nerves. For nine years, she drifted in and out of a catatonic state before the sustained injury eventually killed her. The horse in question was called Serenade. Motion points out that which could be interpreted as an unfortunate contrast; a song of despair, an elegy, brought about by a horse named Serenade, meaning a peaceful, amorous form of song. Andrew Motion fondly remembers how his parents were “country people who did country things”. This poem describes Serenade’s having her horseshoes tended to by a blacksmith, and the blacksmith’s array of tools. Motion informed his audience of his mother’s accident and death. In light of the fate met by Motion’s mother, this description of blacksmith tools conjures up imagery of surgery equipment. Motion’s decision to inform his listening audience about his mother’s death in detail may well be motivated by the desire to achieve this effect of a darker, more human, association.

    “I’ve read you one [poem]about my mother, I should probably read you one about my father” be observes. The poem about his father is similarly elegiac, about Motion-when standing on “a piece of lawn the size of a handkerchief”- being visited by a memory of his father soon after he had died. The memory is of countrified childhood days in the garden, using rusty tools and “wiping down the blades” of a lawn mower.

    Motion opened his talk with the very sobering topic of the Second World War. He described how, in his youth, he and a friend went to Amsterdam, “for the pictures!”, he adamantly assures us with a playful nod. Yet amid appreciating Dutch culture of a clean and wholesome nature, he made a visit to Anne Frank’s house. The memory of the secret annexe inspired Motion to write a poem about it in adulthood, yet it was not the only inspiration for it. He explains how his poem about Anne Frank’s house was also motivated by the need to “prevent evil” in modern Britain in light of the presence of the BNP. This poem by Motion encapsulates the ‘Nie wieder!’ (‘Never again!’) attitude to the Holocaust and oppression. In it, he describes how he observed where Anne Frank and her family tried to ‘go on living normally just a little bit longer’. The poem refers to the winding staircase, the ‘wardrobe that sways’, a ‘sunlit room’; characteristics of an ordinary house yet placed in the darkest context imaginable for modern times. This ordinariness of the poem reflects how normal the Frank family wanted to be.

    He served as the poet Laureate for ten years and has spoken of how this largely disrupted his original writing plans. If this is the case, it would not have been obvious to anyone who follows poetry, for he certainly did not suffer writer’s block. During this time, he produced much topical and relevant poetry. He was keen not to be seen as a Queen’s court jester-like poet producing coy and coquettish, chirpy verse. Instead, he elected to write poetry that exposed the truth and produced a running commentary on events in Britain as they unfolded. His pieces Regime Change (2003) and Summer Wedding (2005) were written in light of the invasion of Iraq and in celebration of Charles and Camilla respectively. He has been commissioned to write poetry by the BBC on many occasions, including a poem about foot and mouth disease for the Today Programme. An epidemic of foot and mouth struck twice in Motion’s Laureateship, once in 1999 and again in 2007.Poignantly, he wrote a piece for the last surviving ‘Tommy’ from the First World War, who died in the summer of 2009. In contrast to his interest in the contemporary and the here and now, Motion informed his audience of his self-confessed ‘hopeless’ soft spot for Romanticism.

    Motion is an unabashed fan of all things Enlightenment. He is also unafraid to put his own stamp on the literary greats. He had to forewarn his audience that his poem about the German thinker Goethe contained much ‘foul language’. Motion contemplates-in his own colourful language- how the log on which Goethe spent much time pondering and thinking may be used by lovers under cover of darkness. Motion describes the living Goethe as being ceaselessly still in pondering. This will ring bells with anyone who has seen Goethe’s statue in the Louvre or in the quarter named after him in Vienna. Motion describes Goethe as a bringer of new ideas, which conjured up images of the two statues of him in Vienna that are opposite each other. Although both statues depict Goethe sitting still (as Motion observes) in a chair, one statue is covered in Arabic writing, an image for other, distant, far-off lands.

    Motion has been lucky enough to meet and have contact with of his influences. He met Philip Larkin when the former was working as a university librarian, which certainly plays a walk-on role in his literary anecdotes. Motion talks fondly of his friendship with Philip Larkin. Motion wrote and had published a biography of Larkin’s life. However, this was commissioned by a third party and not an agreement between the two men.  He attended study sessions in the presence of W.H. Auden and the Northern Irish poet Seamus Heany was initially offered the title of poet Laureate in 1999, but later refused. Alternatively, it might be that his contact with these figures has rendered them influences upon his work.

    Motion’s latest work is a novel entitled Silver, a response to Treasure Island. He serves on a number of academic and artistic boards and committees.

    2012 Andrew Motion Anne Frank Britain issue227 London Poetry
    Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email
    Rosie MacLeod

    Related Posts

    Interview: Lewis Thompson, VP Sport

    October 29, 2022

    Taylor Swift: Midnights Review – The Stories of 13 Sleepless Nights

    October 29, 2022

    Hocus Pocus 2

    October 28, 2022

    2 Comments

    1. Sir John Holman on January 25, 2014 2:57 pm

      I read this article while hunting for Andrew Motion’s poem ‘Serenade’. Thank you.

      Can you tell me which collection of poems I can find Serenade in?

      John

      Reply
      • Rosie MacLeod on January 26, 2014 12:17 am

        ‘Public Property’, his first collection, dated 2002. (Was that because he was the Poet Laureate and ’02 was Her Majesty’s Jubilee year?) Hope this helps. Rosie.

        Reply

    Leave A Reply Cancel Reply

    This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

    MORE INFORMATION
    • ABOUT
    • ADVERTISE
    • CONTACT US
    • GET INVOLVED
    • MEMBERS
    Links
    • Bangor University Bangor University
    • Google+ Google+
    • Undeb Bangor Undeb Bangor
    About

    Seren is Bangor University Students’ Union’s English Language Newspaper

    We have editorial independence from both Bangor University and Bangor Students’ Union. Seren is written by students for students and we’d love you to get involved!

    Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.