Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

The last time former Poet Laureate Andrew Motion stood on the Everyman Theatre stage and spoke with candour, passion and an abundance of knowledge of the world of poetry, the award-winning theatre was a very different beast. In the intervening years since his last visit, The Everyman has become a place in which the world has taken notice of and in which Andrew Motion takes even more interest in the world that many of us perhaps take for granted or shy away from lest it demolish our faint unheard dreams.

Reading selected poems from his latest poetry collection, the sublime The Customs House, Andrew Motion read with the eloquence befitting the title he held and then fielded questions from the audience. It was a night in which insights were made, the reasons in which he found himself within poetic grasp revealed and it was with perhaps a touch of sadness that the crowd who had remained respectfully silent throughout realised subconsciously that these type of evening do not happen often in the city.

Whatever your position on the title of Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion has undoubtedly given his life to it, even after handing over the state quill to former University of Liverpool graduate Carol-Ann Duffy, he has continued to nurture, applaud and thrust the poetic written word into the spotlight in a way that may of his much vaunted predecessors would have found amazing. Following on from the likes of William Wordsworth, Ted Hughes and Ben Jonson is no easy task, it is perhaps a role that doesn’t rest easy upon the head of any that take the position on. However, for Andrew Motion, the man who bought it into the modern era by accepting the position for a ten year period only, he has done so much, with the aid of the contemporary internet era, to further enhance the love of poetry in the young and keep the older generations transfixed than any before him could perhaps have done with any success.

For those in the Everyman Theatre, away perhaps from the sight of Liverpool’s other great passions in life, that of its football and music of which was certainly competing for pull on the cultural pull on the heart-strings on the evening, this was another chance to relish in contemplative repose the words of a passionate poet who, with a quietly spoken tone, is able to inspire and enrapture in equal measure.

Ian D. Hall