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Randomly Moving Particles
Andrew Motion's expansive new collection is built around two long poems that form its opening and close. The title poem, in a kaleidoscope of compelling scenes, engages with subjects that include migration, placement, loss, space exploration and current British and American politics. The more straightforwardly narrative poem, 'How Do the Dead Walk', while reaching back to immemorial stories of brutality, addresses issues of contemporary violence. The book is direct in its emotional appeal, ambitious in its scope, all the while retaining the cinematic vision and startling expression that so freshly lit the lines of his last, Essex Clay.
- GenresPoetry
ebook
Published September 29, 2020
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About the author
Andrew Motion
112 books63 followersSir Andrew Motion, FRSL is an English poet, novelist and biographer, who presided as Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1999 to 2009.
Motion was appointed Poet Laureate on 1 May 1999, following the death of Ted Hughes, the previous incumbent. The Nobel Prize-winning Northern Irish poet and translator Seamus Heaney had ruled himself out for the post. Breaking with the tradition of the laureate retaining the post for life, Motion stipulated that he would stay for only ten years. The yearly stipend of £200 was increased to £5,000 and he received the customary butt of sack.
He wanted to write "poems about things in the news, and commissions from people or organisations involved with ordinary life," rather than be seen a 'courtier'. So, he wrote "for the TUC about liberty, about homelessness for the Salvation Army, about bullying for ChildLine, about the foot and mouth outbreak for the Today programme, about the Paddington rail disaster, the 11 September attacks and Harry Patch for the BBC, and more recently about shell shock for the charity Combat Stress, and climate change for the song cycle I've finished for Cambridge University with Peter Maxwell Davies." In 2003, Motion wrote Regime change, a poem in protest at Invasion of Iraq from the point of view of Death walking the streets during the conflict, and in 2005, Spring Wedding in honour of the wedding of the Prince of Wales to Camilla Parker Bowles. Commissioned to write in the honour of 109 year old Harry Patch, the last surviving 'Tommy' to have fought in World War I, Motion composed a five part poem, read and received by Patch at the Bishop's Palace in Wells in 2008. As laureate, he also founded the Poetry Archive an on-line library of historic and contemporary recordings of poets reciting their own work.
Motion remarked that he found some of the duties attendant to the post of poet laureate difficult and onerous and that the appointment had been "very, very damaging to [his] work". The appointment of Motion met with criticism from some quarters. As he prepared to stand down from the job, Motion published an article in The Guardian which concluded, "To have had 10 years working as laureate has been remarkable. Sometimes it's been remarkably difficult, the laureate has to take a lot of flak, one way or another. More often it has been remarkably fulfilling. I'm glad I did it, and I'm glad I'm giving it up – especially since I mean to continue working for poetry." Motion spent his last day as Poet Laureate holding a creative writing class at his alma mater, Radley College, before giving a poetry reading and thanking Peter Way, the man who taught him English at Radley, for making him who he was. Carol Ann Duffy succeeded him as Poet Laureate on 1 May 2009.
Andrew Motion nació en 1952. Estudió en el University College de Oxford y empezó su carrera enseñando inglés en la Universidad de Hull. También ha sido director de Poetry Review, director editorial de Chatto & Windus, y Poeta Laureado; asimismo, fue cofundador del Poetry Archive, y en 2009 se le concedió el título de Sir por su obra literaria. En la actualidad es profesor de escritura creativa en el Royal Holloway, de la Universidad de Londres. Es miembro de la Royal Society of Literature y vive en Londres. Con un elenco de nobles marineros y crueles piratas, y llena de historias de amor y de valentía, Regreso a la isla del tesoro es una trepidante continuación de La isla del tesoro, escrita con extraordinaria autenticidad y fuerza imaginativa por uno de los grandes escritores ingleses actuales.
Motion was appointed Poet Laureate on 1 May 1999, following the death of Ted Hughes, the previous incumbent. The Nobel Prize-winning Northern Irish poet and translator Seamus Heaney had ruled himself out for the post. Breaking with the tradition of the laureate retaining the post for life, Motion stipulated that he would stay for only ten years. The yearly stipend of £200 was increased to £5,000 and he received the customary butt of sack.
He wanted to write "poems about things in the news, and commissions from people or organisations involved with ordinary life," rather than be seen a 'courtier'. So, he wrote "for the TUC about liberty, about homelessness for the Salvation Army, about bullying for ChildLine, about the foot and mouth outbreak for the Today programme, about the Paddington rail disaster, the 11 September attacks and Harry Patch for the BBC, and more recently about shell shock for the charity Combat Stress, and climate change for the song cycle I've finished for Cambridge University with Peter Maxwell Davies." In 2003, Motion wrote Regime change, a poem in protest at Invasion of Iraq from the point of view of Death walking the streets during the conflict, and in 2005, Spring Wedding in honour of the wedding of the Prince of Wales to Camilla Parker Bowles. Commissioned to write in the honour of 109 year old Harry Patch, the last surviving 'Tommy' to have fought in World War I, Motion composed a five part poem, read and received by Patch at the Bishop's Palace in Wells in 2008. As laureate, he also founded the Poetry Archive an on-line library of historic and contemporary recordings of poets reciting their own work.
Motion remarked that he found some of the duties attendant to the post of poet laureate difficult and onerous and that the appointment had been "very, very damaging to [his] work". The appointment of Motion met with criticism from some quarters. As he prepared to stand down from the job, Motion published an article in The Guardian which concluded, "To have had 10 years working as laureate has been remarkable. Sometimes it's been remarkably difficult, the laureate has to take a lot of flak, one way or another. More often it has been remarkably fulfilling. I'm glad I did it, and I'm glad I'm giving it up – especially since I mean to continue working for poetry." Motion spent his last day as Poet Laureate holding a creative writing class at his alma mater, Radley College, before giving a poetry reading and thanking Peter Way, the man who taught him English at Radley, for making him who he was. Carol Ann Duffy succeeded him as Poet Laureate on 1 May 2009.
Andrew Motion nació en 1952. Estudió en el University College de Oxford y empezó su carrera enseñando inglés en la Universidad de Hull. También ha sido director de Poetry Review, director editorial de Chatto & Windus, y Poeta Laureado; asimismo, fue cofundador del Poetry Archive, y en 2009 se le concedió el título de Sir por su obra literaria. En la actualidad es profesor de escritura creativa en el Royal Holloway, de la Universidad de Londres. Es miembro de la Royal Society of Literature y vive en Londres. Con un elenco de nobles marineros y crueles piratas, y llena de historias de amor y de valentía, Regreso a la isla del tesoro es una trepidante continuación de La isla del tesoro, escrita con extraordinaria autenticidad y fuerza imaginativa por uno de los grandes escritores ingleses actuales.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 20, 2023
Engrossed in a podcast on the poetry bona fides of Bob Dylan; thoughtlessly perusing a favourite East London book store, I stumble upon two collections authored by the very voice I’m listening to.
Taken by serendipity, I remove the two books from the shelf, ensconce myself in a chair and put my mind to selecting which I’d be purchasing. No excruciating discernment was required as the following words hit me like a ton of bricks:
That Christmas I ran through fire in London
Carrying my old Father across my shoulders.
My mother too, she followed. You alive, alas,
I could not bring.
Andrew Motion strikes me as a poet of plain language and jarring motifs (at least in this collection); at moments sparse to the point of desolation, allowing for certain images to break through and take on a glowing resonance:
In the long dark before spring arrives,
A skinned log, chewed off and leprous,
Offers itself as a ray of sunlight trapped.
Randomly Moving Particles maintains this precarious balance of the quotidian and the profound, and always finds itself contemplating the spectre of Death; whether with subtlety in the titular poem or head on in the ambitious, four-part narrative work, How The Dead Walk. He does so with a hand searching always, honest in it’s trembling but never daunting.
Knowing a little more about Motion’s previous work, I think in time people will recognise just how ambitious this publication is, and one which succeeds much of the time.
Taken by serendipity, I remove the two books from the shelf, ensconce myself in a chair and put my mind to selecting which I’d be purchasing. No excruciating discernment was required as the following words hit me like a ton of bricks:
That Christmas I ran through fire in London
Carrying my old Father across my shoulders.
My mother too, she followed. You alive, alas,
I could not bring.
Andrew Motion strikes me as a poet of plain language and jarring motifs (at least in this collection); at moments sparse to the point of desolation, allowing for certain images to break through and take on a glowing resonance:
In the long dark before spring arrives,
A skinned log, chewed off and leprous,
Offers itself as a ray of sunlight trapped.
Randomly Moving Particles maintains this precarious balance of the quotidian and the profound, and always finds itself contemplating the spectre of Death; whether with subtlety in the titular poem or head on in the ambitious, four-part narrative work, How The Dead Walk. He does so with a hand searching always, honest in it’s trembling but never daunting.
Knowing a little more about Motion’s previous work, I think in time people will recognise just how ambitious this publication is, and one which succeeds much of the time.
December 4, 2023
Okay, I'll be honest: I did not "finish"-finish it, but I'm going to say I did because I read the first half which was like comprised of longer-length selected poems, which I liked quite a bit; then the second half is one epic poem, which I'm not as crazy about and don't see myself finishing in 2023. Alas. In general, I feel when it comes to books of poetry you're allowed to say you "read" them even though you have not read them cover-to-cover, word-for-word, since there's a good chance (at least in my case) that you'll revisit them again.
April 29, 2024
I preferred the first part. I did a cursory review of Hercules' stories before reading 'How Do the Dead Walk' but I'm sure I missed a lot of nuance.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews