3 December 2020 Andrew Motion I’m not precisely saying that a really good board meeting at the MLA (Museums, Libraries and Archives Coucil) makes me want to go and write poetry, but there is a pleasure in doing that sort of thing well.
3 December 2020 Andrew Motion More people are reading poetry now than at any time in the history of the human race.
3 December 2020 Andrew Motion Poetry is at the centre of my life, too, emotionally speaking, and intellectually speaking – it’s just that I’m one of those people who enjoy doing other stuff as well.
3 December 2020 Andrew Motion I like eating out. I like buying beautiful paintings and being surrounded by beautiful things. I have to finance that life. I can barely afford a pension scheme because I don’t make enough money.
3 December 2020 Andrew Motion Each sudden gust of light explains itself as flames, but neither they, nor even bombs redoubled on the hills tonight can quite include me in their fear.
3 December 2020 Andrew Motion Thanks partly to the kind of poets that we now have and partly to funding, there’s been a gigantic shift in the way poetry is perceived… Poems on the Underground, poets in schools, football clubs, zoos.
3 December 2020 Andrew Motion In a general way, I want to be a kind of flag-waver, bunting hanger-up, drum-beater, you name it, for poetry.
3 December 2020 Andrew Motion I deeply adored my mum. She was an extraordinary person, even for the prejudice I’m likely to have. She was beautiful, amusing, a tremendous elaborator of things into comic proportions and extravagant in her imagination.
