Stromness Parish Church , Stromness, Orkney, 21 June 2009

‘ORDINARY stuff is miraculous’

Andrew Motion by Johnny Ring

It’s a fairly standard Scottish Parish kirk, with warm wood, pulpit and pews, charity posters. The difference is that – unlike most Sundays – it’s full to the gunnels, heaving with folk. The St Magnus Festival attracts the grey pound, for the most part, with a sprinkling of the pink pound here and there; and they are out in force to hear the ex-Laureate read from Ways of Life, his new collection of autobiographical and critical writings.

Motion is a returnee. He read last year and enjoyed Orkney – he could indulge his love of fishing, and, like many a poet, he was caught by the quality of the light here. The official Festival poet this year is Wendy Cope; Motion, however, is back, wearing several hats.

On Saturday in St Magnus Cathedral the Endillion String Quartet performed Haydn’s Seven Last Words from the Cross; the poet held the audience spellbound with a series of poetic meditations inspired by the chamber music. The 18 century elegance, the purity of the sound, suits Motion’s style. In many ways he seems to be a man caught in the wrong era. On balance I’d say he’d have been happiest hanging around the Lake District having picnics with the Romantics and casting the odd fly.

“Wordsworth is the poet for me,” he says – and it’s clear as he reads that he’s energised by simplicity of style and substance. Nature is important; emotion recollected in tranquillity paramount. He’s found a way back into writing since his father died (his mother’s tragic accident still informs his poetry, but “her afterlife is finished”). He remembers, in ‘The Visit’,

‘catching slow drips from the tap
nothing else moving
except my father
taking my dead mother in his arms.’

He’s an intimate reader, not afraid of the ‘I’ word – indeed, what comes across is the impression of a painfully shy, painfully honest, decent man – in the Orwellian sense – someone who must bare his soul and talk about intimate things, even though he finds it a bit excruciating. He’s always called ‘that most English of poets’ – I suspect because irony is simply not part of his vocabulary. I couldn’t imagine him swearing, or looking askance.

He talks about neglected writers, and it’s not surprising that he mentions John Clare – a fine nature poet, direct and attentive to tiny detail. He talks with affection of Constable country, of feeling rooted, the fourth generation of his father’s family; “at least I knew where I came from”. He describes the ‘house where I first paid attention to the world’, the ‘Victorian hall with its sour yellow brickwork.’ ‘It was easy to see/how the door might have looked/ in the old days.’

Conversational, yet measured, the language has a deceptive casualness about it; it takes work to be so unshowy.

Of course he’s memoralising an England that’s gone, but that’s only part of his task as a poet. He inhabits nostalgia very naturally, as a Romantic should – but he also engages with the present. He’s warmer than Larkin – there’s nothing waspish or snobbish about Motion. He’s self deprecating, gently witty, a bit nervous, rushing the reading sometimes.

He talks about the weather, the family, the rector, his dead friend, poet Mick Imlah; he describes his travels – he appears to be the quintessential Englishman abroad, in Vitesque, where ‘my beautiful train roared’ – naïve, delighted, captivated by foreignness.

It’s instructive to bear in mind that he brought the Laureateship into the 21st century, setting up websites, visiting schools. ‘I never felt there were things I couldn’t do: only that I couldn’t write disrespectful things about the Royal Family.’ He says – politely answering questions he must have had to answer a thousand times before. It is quite impossible to imagine him being disrespectful to anyone.

He describes the importance of “identifying profound moments about where the world is” – the Wordsworthian idea of innocence, a clear child-like gaze, matters to him. When he says “ordinary stuff is miraculous” you can see what he means, what he’s trying to do in his poetry.

“Your skies make me look at things more closely”, he tells the audience; and they leave the kirk feeling that the quotidian has been elevated into an art form, paid proper attention to, celebrated. Now he’s an ex-Laureate, like a chartered accountant released from the daily grind, he’ll relish the freedom; but he won’t stop quietly observing, taking words and “fiddling with them”, talking about something which must be Englishness.

© Morag MacInnes, 2009

Links

• St Magnus Festival
• Andrew Motion