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11 May 2007
Poet Laureates of Two Nations Reach Across the Atlantic

By Elizabeth Kelleher
USINFO Staff Writer

Washington – U.S. poet laureate Donald Hall and British poet laureate Andrew Motion read together at the Library of Congress May 10.

British Ambassador to the United States David Manning called it a “marvelous thing” that the two poets are “talking together and reading their poetry together.”

Even though the poet laureates had not met until just days before the Washington reading and are of different generations – Hall is 78 years old, and Motion, 54 -- they had an immediate rapport. Hall said, on the morning before the Library of Congress reading, that he has found Motion to be “a very agreeable man and a very intelligent man. We talked poetry with each other [at a dinner earlier in the week]. I look forward to seeing him again.”

Each poet knows something of the other’s country. Both attended Oxford University in England. At the Washington reading, the Library of Congress distributed excerpts of poems by Hall and Motion that had won the Newdigate Prize at Oxford (Hall’s in 1952, Motion’s in 1975). And Motion told USINFO he frequently visits the United States.

Despite different job descriptions -- the British poet laureate serves for life and is called on at times to pen verses for royal occasions, while the U.S. poet laureate is limited to a one-year term during which brings poetry to the masses – the poets’ writing styles and literary tastes are similar. Both claim Thomas Hardy as an important influence. Both have written several accessible poems that celebrate a sense of place or that explore grief after the death of a loved one.

Hall often writes about his family farm in New Hampshire, where he visited his grandparents as a boy and has lived since the mid-1970s. One of his best known “farm poems” is called Names of Horses, a description of farmers killing and burying beloved horses that have become too lame to work. At the Library of Congress, Hall read Maples, about dying trees on his farm that he remembers from boyhood. “Most of my work in the last few years tends to be about old age,” Hall told the audience.

“I’ve written a great deal of my poetry -- not only the farm poetry, but a lot of it – as a way of preserving something that is no longer in the world,” Hall said.

Hall is frequently compared to Robert Frost, perhaps the best-known American poet, who wrote about rural New England. “In subject matter, I am linked with Frost, surely, but not in style,” Hall said.

A PLANNED REUNION

The Washington reading was part of a three-stop tour planned by the Library of Congress and the Poetry Foundation in Chicago. The poets read in Chicago earlier in the week and will read in London June 6. Poet laureates from the two countries never before have come together for such a tour.

Explaining the reasons behind the historic readings, Hall said, “English poetry and American poetry used to know each other better than they do right now.”

The poets agreed that the two countries’ literati suffered something akin to a divorce decades ago. Hall said he is not sure why

Hall’s and Motion’s symbolic step is meant to renew mutual interests between writers and readers across the Atlantic.

Both poets agreed that, until the 1960s, to be interested in British poetry meant to be interested in American poetry, and vice-versa. Hall recalled editing an anthology in the 1950s that mixed English and American poets, alphabetically, throughout the book. “That would be eccentric right now, but it wasn’t then,” he said.

Motion said he believes that American poetry “retreated” into boundaries that were associated with particular camps and that many American poets have moved toward “a sort of aggressive form of modernism.” Meanwhile, he said, “the Brits [have been] writing in some sort of disgracefully old-fashioned way.”

At Library of Congress, Motion read from his own works and those of other U.K. poets he admires -- Don Paterson, Jo Shapcott and Simon Armitage -- to familiarize Americans with them.

In London, Hall will read from other American poets’ work in addition to his own. He said he is considering reading a work by Frank Bidart, whose poems “take a great deal of room to develop an idea,” and one by Kay Ryan, whose poems are “small, rather biting improvisations.

I look to different poets for different things and find them in the expanse of American poetry.”

Motion said audiences in both countries should see that national archetypes might be out of date. He said some British poets write in avant-garde styles and some Americans are sufficiently formal to engage a wide British audience. The idea that Britain is a “super-formal country” is wrong, he said. “I know you have just had the queen here. But she’s the queen, and of course she’s formal.”

Similarly, he said, the idea that “all Americans are madly trendy” is untrue. To make his point, he made a gesture to the décor of the Library of Congress House members’ reception room, where he spoke to USINFO. The room is ornately decorated with gold, carved wood, painted murals and heavy carpets.

Listen to Andrew Motion read his poem “Anne Frank Huis” at the Library of Congress May 10 via this audio link. Donald Hall’s reading of his poem “Maples” at the same event is available at this audio link.

(USINFO is produced by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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