3. 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.
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4. In 1977, Motion's first collection of poems, The Pleasure Steamers, was
published by Sycamore Press.
Other early collections include Independence ; Secret
Narratives (1983); Dangerous Play: Poems 1974-1984 , which received the
John Llewellyn Rhys Prize; and Natural Causes (1987), which won the Dylan
Thomas Award.
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5. From 1977 until 1981, Motion served as Lecturer in English at the University
of Hull, where he met and became close friends with the poet and
librarian Philip Larkin.
When Larkin died in 1985, his longtime companion Monica Jones requested
that Motion consider writing a biography of his mentor and friend.
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6. Motion also wrote Keats: A Biography (Faber and Faber, 1987), which
inspired film director Jane Campion's adaptation, Bright Star in 2009.
Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1984 and knighted in
1999, Motion served as Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1999 to
2009.
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7. His other honors include the Arvon Observer Prize and the
Somerset Maugham Award, among many others.
He currently lives in London, England
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