Poet Laureate got writer's block

As Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion has worked tirelessly to promote his love of words. But nine years in the job have taken their toll.

Speaking to The Independent yesterday, Motion said that while he did not regret accepting the illustrious appointment in 1999 after the death of Ted Hughes, he had not been prepared for the isolation of the job.

"The pressures and peculiarities of the laureateship, some of which I put myself through, did have a rocky effect on my life. It was a strange mix of making me self-conscious that so few writers are made to feel because of being so public. There is an isolation in being the Poet Laureate," he said.

He advised the future laureate, to be appointed before next spring, to be aware of the pressures of the job. "One way to make it easier is to see it coming. I didn't see it coming and only now I've had the chance to read the letters of [the former laureates] John Betjeman and Ted Hughes. You do need to be aware of the problem and then find your own way to deal with it. There's no way of avoiding this problem – to do the job and maintain the balance for writing poetry," he added.

During his laureateship, due to end next May, Motion has travelled to schools around the country and has helped to create an online poetry archive containing recordings of poets reciting their own work. He is also the chairman of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA).

These responsibilities did great things for promoting poetry across the nation, he said, but the pressures of the job led to a sudden, disturbing inability to write poetry. About halfway though his laureateship he got writer's block, which only lifted last autumn. Until then, he was left thinking he would have to continue his career writing biographies, prose and memoirs.

"You may as well call it writer's block. I managed to write a few commissions in that time. It was quite rattling in a way ... If you are leading a public life and speaking up for poetry, the fully conscious mind will become dominant, which is wrong for the vital mix you need for writing poetry.

"It also had something to do with my personal life. My father died two years ago, the effects of which I'm still trying to work through. There are difficulties, but for all the alarm and worry about not writing, it is my sure feeling that the advantages of the job and speaking up for poetry far outweigh the difficulties. I remember thinking that if poetry does leave me, I will really miss it, and miss it badly, but there are always biographies and prose," he said.

As laureate he has also composed verse for state occasions and the Royal Family. Motion, 55, a royalist, said the latter was a "challenge", but he had welcome feedback from the Royal Family, thanking him for his lyrics. "When I wrote a poem for the Queen Mother's 100th birthday, she sent me back a six-sided handwritten letter of thanks... [And] when I composed a poem for Prince Charles and Camilla's wedding, she sent me a handwritten letter as well," he said.

He added that he gained information on individual royal figures from newspaper reports and then attempted to universalise them in some way. "What's interesting to me is to imagine what it's like to be a human being inside this very curious world with the difficult structures that surround them. What I try to do in the poems is write about them, but for that to be applicable to other people," he explained.

'Diamond wedding'

The opening two stanzas from 'Diamond Wedding' by Andrew Motion:

Love found a voice and spoke two names aloud – two private names, though breezed through public air – and joined them in a life where duty spoke in languages their tenderness could share,

A life remote from ours because it asked each day, each action to be kept in view, and yet familiar in the trust it placed in human hearts, in hearts remaining true.