Former Poet Laureate Andrew Motion Reflects on Literary Influences

Andrew Motion: ‘Wilfred Owen became a kind of sacred text for me’

The former poet laureate on growing up with Lawrence Durrell, rereading Henry James and getting to grips with the genius of Alexander Pope My earliest reading memory My parents were country people who thought that looking after or chasing animals was more fun than reading: my father used to say that he’d read half a book in his life (The Lonely Skier by Hammond Innes), and while my mother got through three or four novels a year, she didn’t expect me to do anything equivalent. But I do reme...

By Andrew Motion