"Public Property" is the first book to be produced by Andrew Motion since taking up as Poet Laureate.

It's a collection of his public and private poetry.

(Edited highlights of the panel's review)

Watch the whole programme - 06 September 2002

MARK LAWSON:
He has had a lot of mockery as laureate. A lot of newspapers ringing for a quote of Motion. What do you think this will do to his reputation?

ROSIE BOYCOTT:
A huge amount. I haven't been a great fan of the public laureate face of his work and there are some wonderful poems in here. There is a poem about a character who kills his wife and child and ends up on the street.

There are a lot of poems about nature, about fishing. He is lyrical and descriptive. There are two great poems dedicated to his wife's father and mother after their death, which are moving and lovely. I really enjoyed it.

I thought it was terrific. I wish he would get this kind of strength into, so to speak, the public Motion that we get on in the newspapers on state occasions.

MARK LAWSON:
Had he waited until this week, he would have called it "Get me out of here, I am a poet." That is the message of the book, "Let me out of the laureateship."

EKOW ESHUN:
He has managed to give context to the poison chalice of being Poet Laureate, in that those public poems are in here within all his other poems.

It means you can go back to those public poems about the Queen Mother, re-read them in another way. For me, he is a poet who manages to capture fleeting small moments, but equally he has also got a social voice.

So when he talks about the Queen Mother, he manages to get in Palestine and Germany, in a way which normally poems about royalty merely talk about them.

Here he has enough of a broad view to understand the bigger picture, but equally as a poet you can understand the smallest, tiniest moments, and bring them to life and capture and hold those.

MARK LAWSON:
I had a real sense of him working hard at this collection, trying to answer critics. He left out his September 11th poem. He has included some of the other laureate stuff. Does he manage to give any point to being Poet Laureate?

MARK KERMODE:
No. Maybe the Poet Laureate thing, I am reminded about Amadeus, Salieri. The person you appoint to be the court composer is not the genius. He will be the person who will turn the stuff in on time.

There are some good poems in here. "Serenade" is a good one. "The Dog of the Light Brigade" has very good dark comedy in it.

Others serve exactly the purpose that a Poet Laureate in my mind is paid or employed to do, which is to put some sort of order into stuff. You talk about the Queen Mother and it mentions Germany. It has a couple of wry asides.

For example, he says the people in the East end thought she was one of them, or it seemed that way. There seems a tiny little dig. All the way through, I thought it was nice.

The worst thing you can say about poetry is it's nice. There is nothing in it that set me aflame.

EKOW ESHUN:
You are repeating the argument that somehow he is a hack poet, just trotting out lines for Public Property.

MARK KERMODE:
I think that's true.

EKOW ESHUN:
But when you read this, there is far more private sentiment.

MARK LAWSON:
But he is not quotable, is he, which is odd.

EKOW ESHUN:
Is that a crime? He is quite subtle. What's wrong with that.