A bit garbled but looking for an Andrew Motion poem

[Raederle]

DS2 was premature and very ill. When he was in the incubator, he slept all the time. He didn’t open his eyes for weeks. It felt like he was hibernating.

I remember a phrase came to me: he could survive for years like this, but we could not.

It made me think of some Andrew Motion poems I studied at secondary school over 30 years ago. One was ‘In The Attic’ and it was about his mum who fell off a horse and was in a coma.

I think the phrase comes from a poem about his mum being in hospital and him visiting her but I can’t find it. I have his Selected Poems and it’s not in there.

DS2 is 9 now so that period is well behind us, but I still think of that phrase and how much it resonated with me at the time and I’d really like to read the poem again.

I'll have a look for you. That phrase is so powerful, isn't it?

So you think it was "In the Attic"?

I thought it was ‘In The Attic’ but it’s not. I feel like there were a series of poems about his mum - the fall, the hospital, the aftermath - but can’t track those down. ‘In The Attic’ is about finding her clothes and the memories they contain of her.

Was it from In The Blood?

Sorry, that's an anthology of his poems about his childhood, his mother's accident etc

I've just been reading this article where Andrew Motion talks about his mother's accident. It's incredibly moving.

ghpoetryplace.blogspot.com/2011/05/in-attic.html
raphies.

The poem here is one of several Motion has written about his mother, who suffered a serious riding accident during a fox hunt and lay in a coma for ten years before her death.

IN THE ATTIC

Even though we know now
your clothes will never
be needed, we keep them,
upstairs in a locked trunk.

Sometimes I kneel there
touching them, trying to relive
time you wore them, to catch
the actual shape of arm and wrist.

My hands push down
between hollow, invisible sleeves,
hesitate, then take hold
and lift:

a green holiday; a red christening;
all your unfinished lives
fading through dark summers
entering my head as dust.

I thought ‘In The Bloof’ was a memoir not poems. If it’s poems, it may be in there.

That article is very moving Hollowtalk. So much detail and emotion. An ordinary day suddenly torn open by something so awful.

I think the poem i’m thinking of is about the mother in hospital.

It must have been a terrifying time for you and I'm so glad your son came through. It shows the power of poetry, doesn't it?

If you posted under one of the Education sections and put "Andrew Motion" in the title, you might find someone there could help.

Thanks - that’s what I think about that phrase. Andrew Motion wrote it about something that happened to his mum and his life, I read it aged 13 or 14, then 25 years later, it rose up to connect with something that happened to my son and my life. It has enormous power.

I think I will post in education - maybe a teacher will remember teaching it.

Motion's Essex Clay centres on his mother and her illness particularly part one, so it's possible that he's woven this observation into that poem, don't have a copy to hand so can't check for you.

Dottie that looks promising. I think i’ll order that collection. Even if the poem i’m thinking of isn’t in it, I can still read the others. Thank you all.