Former poet laureate Andrew Motion reflects on the books that shaped his reading life, describing Wilfred Owen’s poetry as a lasting “sacred text” after encountering it at school. His choices show a preference for demanding, provocative writing and trace the development of his interests in poetry, literary fiction and ideas about time.

Motion recalls enjoying Ruth Stiles Gannett’s My Father’s Dragon as a child and carrying Lawrence Durrell’s White Eagles Over Serbia as a teenager, though he never finished it. He credits an A-level anthology with encouraging his own early poetry, now admires Alexander Pope after initially finding him difficult, and regularly rereads Wordsworth, John Berryman and Henry James. He says he no longer wants to reread The Lord of the Rings, is currently reading George Oppen and Dostoevsky, and finds both comfort and challenge in Elizabeth Bishop.