I wish I'd been better able to resist the sense of obligation to write some of the poems I did. It's in the nature of commissioned work to be written too much from the side of your mind that knows what it's doing, which dries up the poetry.

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About Andrew Motion

Andrew Motion was a contemporary English poet and writer. Sir Andrew Motion is an English poet, novelist, and biographer, who was Poet Laureate from 1999 to 2009. During the period of his laureateship, Motion founded the Poetry Archive, an online resource of poems and audio recordings of poets reading their own work. Read more on Wikipedia →

Themes

  • Work — The value of effort, discipline, and meaningful labour
  • Nature — Appreciation for the natural world and our place within it

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