Professor Sir Andrew Motion Professor of Creative Writing andrew.motion@rhul.ac.uk

| Education | Career | Teaching | Publications | Research | Prizes etc|

EDUCATION
Andrew Motion read English at University College, Oxford, where he gained first class honours in 1974; in 1976 he was awarded a M. Litt. for a thesis on 'The Poetry of Edward Thomas'.

CAREER
From 1976-1980 he taught English at the University of Hull; from 1981-3 he was Editor of Poetry Review; from 1983-9 he was Poetry Editor and Editorial Director of Chatto and Windus; from 1989-91 he was Editorial Consultant at Faber and Faber; from 1995-2003 he was Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. In 1999 he was appointed Poet Laureate. From 1996-2000 he was a member of the Arts Council of England, and from 1996-2003 he was Chair of the Arts Council Literature Panel. He is also a Vice-Chairman of the Poetry Society, a co-founder of Writing Together, a founder and co-director of the Poetry Archive, and chair of the British Council Walberberg seminar.

TEACHING
The bulk of his teaching has recently concentrated on Creative Writing, but he has also lectured extensively on c19 and c20 poetry, and supervised several theses in both these areas. He has also been visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University, St Louis, and has lectured in America, Japan, Germany, France and Italy. He is the external examiner for the Creative Writing MA at Queen's Belfast.

He has been appointed as Professor of Creative Writing at Royal Holloway to design and be Director of the new MA in Creative Writing.

PUBLICATIONS
Andrew Motion has published ten collections of poems, the first being The Pleasure Steamers (1976) and the most recent Public Property (2002). He has also written four biographies, including lives of Philip Larkin and John Keats; three novels including The Invention of Dr Cake (2003); edited the poems of William Barnes and Thomas Hardy; compiled two anthologies; and written widely for a number of journals and newspapers. He presently has a reviewing contract with The Guardian.

RESEARCH
Andrew Motion's main research areas are Romantic and Twentieth Century poetry.

PRIZES etc
Andrew Motion has won the Arvon/Observer poetry prize, the John Llewelyn Rhys Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award and the Whitbread Prize for biography. He has honorary doctorates from the universities of Hull, Exeter, Brunel, Sheffield Hallam and the Open University.

RESEARCH SUPERVISION

Adam O’Riordan completed the MA in Creative Writing at RHUL and is now about to begin a practice-based PhD with Sir Andrew Motion and Professor Robert Hampson as supervisors. Adam's website can be viewed at www.adamoriordan.com.

Top of page