Ted Hughes Poetry

Ted Hughes (1930-1998) was a poet, playwright and short story writer.

ted-hughesHe was brought up in Mexborough, a coal-mining town in South Yorkshire. His upbringing in Yorkshire later had a strong influence on his poetry. After finishing school he went to study in Pembroke College, Cambridge. Here Ted Hughes studied first English and then anthropology and  archaeology. This created an interest in mythological systems which grew into a fascination with astrology, shamanism and hermeticism, these topics also had an influence upon his poetry. At Cambridge he met his future wife Sylvia Plath. At the time she was an unknown poet. Ted Hughes helped support his wife with publication of her poetry but their personal relationship had many tumultuous events and tragically his wife Sylvia committed suicide in 1963. According to Elaine Feinstein, whose biography on the author appeared in 2001, Hughes never recovered from his wife’s death. However one of his best known works was published in 1970 entitled The “Crow”  These were a series of story poems which discussed issues of death and overcoming death. Ted Hughes was appointed Poet Laureate in 1984.

Ted Hughes Poems

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Quotes of Ted Hughes

 ‘It is occasionally possible, just for brief moments, to find the words that will unlock the doors of all those many mansions in the head and express something – perhaps not much, just something – of the crush of information that presses in on us from the way a crow flies over and the way a man walks and the look of a street and from what we did one day a dozen years ago. Words that will express something of the deep complexity that makes us precisely the way we are “

– From: Poetry in the Making

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‘Imagine what you are writing about. See it and live it.’

– From: Poetry in the Making

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