Published 26 March 2026 A new collection of poems from the former Poet Laureate - a remarkable contemplation of departure and return.Andrew Motion’s new collection gives a moving account of the friction and interplay between past and present. In the opening elegies for friends and former versions of the self, and in the long title sequence that completes the book, he explores the ways in which regrets compete with hope, and the appetite for life is always a prey to hard facts of mortality. The energy and reach of these poems open a new chapter in Motion’s writing, remaining true to the elegiac subjects which have always been his main concern, while adding new depths of pathos and resonance. ‘Not only is Andrew Motion an attentive writer of elegy and even nostalgia, he is a keen recorder of how it feels now, in this instant, to be alive.’ Candia McWilliam ‘Motion’s greatest and most distinctive gift . . . is to look squarely at the world and describe it with a plain and unsentimental eloquence that makes worldly value seem all the more questionable.’ Bernard O’Donoghue
