Ten years after being given the job Andrew Motion's tenure as Poet Laureate is coming to an end but he is refusing to get involved in who is successor should be.

Rumour has it it will most likely be woman for the first time, with Carol Ann Duffy the bookies favourite after Wendy Cope ruled herself out, but other artists like Simon Armitage, James Fenton and Benjamin Zephaniah - who lost out to Motion a decade ago - have also been mooted.

However, Motion, who hands over the reigns next month, believes it his not his place to comment on the selection process.

"I am not getting involved in all that," he said.

"It's not my position to give a view but I would be surprised if the person appointed doesn't set about it in the same way as I have."

The 56-year-old has had a pretty dynamic approach to the job he was given after Ted Hughes' death, shifting away from the writing side of things and getting more involved in raising poetry's profile with such initiatives as the Poetry Archive - an online collection of poets reading their work.

"There was no job description but I decided the doing side of the job should be as important as the writing side of it," he said.

"Poetry needs an ambassador and who better to do that than the laureate?

"There are people who think the position is antiquated and it might be in some respect but you can do things to raise its profile and change that.

"Overall I have enjoyed it very much and feel very honoured by the chance to hold this interesting position but there are difficult things that come with it as well."

One of those things has been the effect the job has had on his work, forcing him to take a break from writing.

But the spark has returned in recent years and next month he releases The Cinder Path, his first fresh collection of new poems since 2002 and he admits there is a different feel to his work.

"For various reasons I pretty much stopped writing in the middle part of my laureateship," he said.

"It felt difficult in my role of being laureate but in the last couple of years they have come back to me again.

"I do feel slightly different about myself when I am writing now, a bit like a different person writing in a different kind of way and that's very exciting for me.

"My subjects have always been love, death and the countryside and that hasn't changed but the music of them feels different."

Andrew Motion, Croydon Clocktower, Katharine Street, March 16, 7.30pm, £10. Call 020 8253 1030 or visit croydonclocktower.org.uk.