Born in London in October 26, 1952, Sir Andrew Motion was raised in Stisted, in Essex, the son of an army colonel and brewery executive. He studied at Radley College from 1965 to 1970, where he was introduced to the poetry of Thomas Hardy, Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes, William Wordsworth, John Keats, and others. He later studied weekly with W. H. Auden at University College, Oxford.
In 1977, Motion's first collection of poems, The Pleasure Steamers, was published by Sycamore Press. Other early collections include Independence (Salamander Press, 1981); Secret Narratives (1983); Dangerous Play: Poems 1974-1984 (Salamander Press / Penguin, 1984), which received the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize; and Natural Causes (1987), which won the Dylan Thomas Award.
Since then, Motion has published numerous volumes of poetry, most recently The Cinder Path (Faber and Faber, 2009), which was shortlisted for the 2010 Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry; The Mower: New & Selected Poems (David R Godine, 2009); Public Property (Faber and Faber, 2002), comprised of verses written during years of service as Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom; Selected Poems 1976-1997 (1998); The Price of Everything (1994); and Love in a Life (1991).
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