Andrew Motion: ‘Wilfred Owen became a kind of holy book for me’ | Books

My earliest memory of reading
My parents were country people who thought that looking after or chasing animals was more fun than reading: my father used to say that he read half a book in his life (The Lonely Skier by Hammond Innes), and while my mother went through three or four books a year, she didn’t expect me to do anything similar. But I remember enjoying what my grandmother gave me – My Father’s Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett. I must have been seven or so, I thought it was funny and clever.

Books that changed me as a teenager
In my first grade, I somehow got my hands on White Eagles Over Serbia by Lawrence Durrell, which my parents thought was inappropriately violent. I haven’t finished it yet, but I like to carry it around as a testament to my growth. Then, in my high school, my history teacher read Wilfred Owen to us (we were studying the first world war), and the lights of poetry in my mind started to appear. When I bought Owen’s Collected Poems it became a kind of sacred text to me (it still is).

The book that made me want to be a writer
I’m not sure I “wanted to be a writer” until I discovered I was one: it was already possible. But I started singing my poetry when I was researching my best A-level poem: Theme and Variations, by RB Heath (1965). Despite the book’s unappealing title, it made me feel like Carter was breaking into Tutankhamun’s tomb.

The the author returned
Alexander Pope. The first poem I read by him was the Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot, which baffled me with so many references to things and people I had never heard of, I couldn’t see how clever and talented he was. Fifty years later he is one of my most admired poets.

I also read books
Wordworth’s words Introductionin its first two translations, by John Berryman 77 Songs of Dreams: two works of poetry which both feel to me like the breath of life. Almost all the books I read were written Henry Jamesmy favorite fiction writer, and whose future work becomes more important to me year after year.

I can’t read this book anymore
JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. I loved it so much the first time (in my early 20s), I even read it over breakfast. Now, although I respond warmly to his warnings about brute force, I find myself disinterested in such matters. My loss, I dare say.

A book that I found very late
There are many – mostly books, as I always like to read poetry. Among non-fiction books, I am very happy to have read Galen Strawson Things that bother me. It changed the way I think about how I spend time.

The book I am reading now
I like to have several books on the go at once: this week I’m reading The Collected Poems of George Oppen and Dostoevsky An idiot. It’s more fun than it sounds.

My comfort read
Most of the time I read to have some type of experience dis-I will comfort instead of console, as I like books that provoke me. But everything is Elizabeth Bishop – prose, poetry and letters – it has both. And much more than that.