Andrew Motion, the current Poet Laureate of England, will be the guest reader at the 2007 Jean Burden Poetry Reading. The event will take place on Wednesday, April 11, 2007 at 6:30pm in the Golden Eagle Ballroom. This event is made possible by the CSULA Center for Contemporary Poetry and Poetics, the Virginia E. Smith Fund for Poetry and Poetics, and through the additional support of the British Council USA.

Andrew Motion was born in 1952.  He read English at 

photo credit: Antonio Olmos

University College, Oxford and subsequently spent two years writing about the poetry of Edward Thomas for an M. Litt..  From 1976 to 1980 he taught English at the University of Hull; from 1980 to 1982 he edited the Poetry Review and from 1982 to 1989 he was Editorial Director and Poetry Editor at Chatto & Windus. He has recently been appointed Professor of Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is a member of the Arts Council of England and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He lives in London.

His work has received the Arvon/Observer Prize, the John Llewelyn Rhys Prize and the Dylan Thomas Prize. In 1994 his biography of Philip Larkin was awarded the Whitbread Prize for Biography, and shortlisted for the NCR Award. The Lamberts won the Somerset Maugham Award. 

Andrew Motion was appointed as Poet Laureate in May 1999. 

For more information, call the Cal State L.A. English Department at (323) 343-4140.