Storytelling
Motion has carved a niche for himself as a narrative poet. His poems—not all by any means—tell stories. But he is not a narrative poet in the mold of a Longfellow. Whereas Longfellow’s mastery of technique is easily obscured by his reaching for the rhyme, Motion steadfastly avoids rhyme. He is almost not shackled by adhering to the requirements of meter. Sometimes his poems look less like verse and more like chunks of prose and at other times he avoids natural punctuation to create a more conversational form of stream of consciousness. But the imagery is concrete, the allusions are easily grasped, the language is clear and the meaning of the story is more often than not precise.
England
Motion is a British writer so it should come as no surprise. What is surprising is that as a theme, there is no conventional wisdom at work. The poet does not limit himself to conventionally British settings; some of his most famous works are set in America. His verse is not focused on the natural beauty of the countryside nor does it bring to life the congestion and urban madness of London. Motion’s poetry is not one filled with Cockney slang or uniquely British idioms or expression, yet nevertheless it is never less than clear that this is not the work of an America or Australian. The stories of narratives paint a portrait of British history over the past century that taken as a whole slowly reveal the truly massive changes taking place in the social order of that country. Reading the right selection of Motion’s poems is like reading an especially lively and well-written history of English life in the 20th century.
Loss and Alienation
Although a storyteller and a writer who infuses his work with autobiographical details, Motion in no way belongs to the confessional school. He does use his talent to explore his own emotional issues by making public the most private details of his life. Nevertheless, scholars and critics generally agree that one significant event from his past infuses his body of work. A horse-riding accident essentially took Motion’s mother from his life when he was just 17. Surgery prevented immediate death, but she was either paralyzed or comatose for the remaining nine years of her life and this brutally prolonged awareness of loss with the ever-present lingering hope for return. The complexity of this early trauma is realized in myriad ways. His almost epically long poem “Independence” can be interpreted as being about the loss of British colonial power in India and one officer’s desperation for things to go back to the way things were. Likewise, Motion often turns to outsiders experiencing loss as people alienated from society like Anne Frank or the villagers facing economic ruin from natural disaster in his award-winning poem "Inland."
