THE 19th poet laureate, Andrew Motion, is coming to Worcestershire to give a reading of his work.

Motion, pictured right, who was made poet laureate in 1999, will be giving the latest talk for Stoke Prior-based literary group Words.

Born in London in 1952, Motion went on the study at Oxford where he won the Newdigate Prize for Poetry.

He became a lecturer at Hull University in 1976 and the following year published his first collection of poetry, The Pleasure Steamers.

Whilst at Hull he met the university's librarian Philip Larkin and won a Whitbread Award in 1994 for his biography of the poet, A Writer's Life.

He also wrote a biography of Keats in 1997 and another biography, The Lamberts, won the Somerset Maughan Award when it was first published in 1986.

Leaving Hull in 1980, Motion became editor of Poetry Review and poetry editor with the publishers Chatto & Windus.

In 1982 he co-edited The Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry and in 1995 became professor of creative writing at the University of East Anglia.

His work includes poems about the deaths of Diana and the Queen Mother. His most recent collections of poetry are Salt Water (1997) and Selected Poems (1998) and his book

The Invention of Dr Cake was published earlier this year.

He was inspired to write at the age of 16 when his mother was injured in a riding accident and remained in a coma until her death 10 years later.

He brought her into his writing as a way to keep her alive, and one of these works, The Letter, won the 1981 Arvon International Poetry Competition

"We have some very well known speakers and authors, but to get Andrew Motion is a tremendous coup," said Words' publicity officer Frances Page.

Formed in 1979, Words was set up to promote interest in the written and spoken words.

Since then it has played host to a wide spectrum of writers, dramatists and poets.

This year the group has featured a talk by Peter Conradi, friend and biographer of Iris Murdoch. The next talk, after Motion, Dominic Hibberd will be talking about his new biography of First World War poet Wilfrid Owen.

Motion's poetry reading tonight at LG Harris & Co's conference room in Stoke Prior in Bromsgrove, has sold out and a waiting list for cancellations has already been set up.