Andrew Motion became the UK's Poet Laureate in 1999. Listen to Motion read his poem and then describe the feelings that inspired it. "It's about sitting in the garden with my wife at the end of the summer, in other words a poem I wrote very recently. Feeling happy.."

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After reading the poem, try some writing yourself.

A Glass of Wine

Exactly as the setting sun
clips the heel of the garden,

exactly as a pigeon
roosting tries to sing
and ends up moaning,

exactly as the ping
of someone’s automatic carlock
dies into a flock
of tiny echo-aftershocks,

a shapely hand of cloud
emerges from the crowd
of airy nothings that the wind allowed
to tumble over us all day
and points the way

towards its own decay
but not before
a final sunlight-shudder pours
away across our garden-floor

so steadily, so slow
it shows you everything you need to know
about this glass I’m holding out to you,

its open eye
enough to bear the whole weight of the sky.

Andrew Motion

Your turn

Listen to Andrew Motion describe the feelings that inspired this poem:

"It's about sitting in the garden with my wife at the end of the summer, in other words a poem I wrote very recently. Feeling happy, and feeling, you know, one of those sort of twilight no doubt slightly sentimental moments of which love weighs enough to be able to see it existing in some sort of substantial way in the scales. And the pan of the scales weighs against all the other stuff that's in the other pan."

Why don't you write a poem about a moment when you felt happy. Send it to us.

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