
7 June 2010
New Website online!
Dear visitors, the new, revised version of this website has just gone online. Several sections are still waiting to be updated, so please bear with me.
From now on, please use the new site's news section, this page here will not be updated any longer. I will gradually remove pages from this site as migration to the new version progresses. Links to www.earth-moon.org will soon also directly take you to the new site.
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28 April 2010
There will be a conference centered on literary archives at Exeter University on 2nd and 3rd October 2010. During the conference, some of the Ted Hughes manuscripts at Exeter will be on display. More here.
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The British Library kindly sent me a review copy of Sylvia Plath - The Spoken Word. Here's a full list of the contents. More on this soon.
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Roy Davids submitted a revised version of a poem in memory of Ted Hughes, which you can read here.
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Roger Elkin has submitted a new essay, which you'll be able to read here soon!
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15 April 2010
Ann Skea just wrote that Helen Broderick, archivist of Ted Hughes' manuscripts at the British Library, informed her that the British Library had obtained an original copy of the Saint Botolph's Review, annotated by Ted. There is a press release at http://www.bl.uk/news/2010/pressrelease20100414.html. Ms Broderick also says that the MSS archive should be available to scholars very soon.
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Roy Davids informed me that the British Library has published a CD »Sylvia Plath - The Spoken Word« of recordings from the BBC and British Library Sound Archives. According to their website, the CD includes
and readings of
The set is available from the British Library shop.
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30 March 2010
Frieda Hughes talks about Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes
Ann Skea alerted me to two news articles in The Guardian in one of which Frieda Hughes talks about Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.
Read the full story at The Times Online here and here.
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Ted Hughes Memorial in the Poets' Corner, Westminster
After much discussion in recent months, it seems decided now that Ted Hughes is to receive a permanent memorial in the ›Poets' Corner‹ at Westminster Abbey.
Read the full story at The Times website (commentary by Erica Wagner
here), The Guardian website and at BBC News.
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20 March 2010
New book by Keith Sagar!
Ted Hughes and Nature: ›Terror and Exultation‹. Fastprint Publishing, 2010 (www.fast-print.net, £ 9.50). From the announcement:
Hughes' relationship with nature is so central to his work that every book on him has discussed it. However, because of the larger scope of all these books, this discussion has remained at a fairly superficial level. Here Keith Sagar tries to take it onto a deeper level by relating it to paganism and Christianity, myth, Greek tragedy, Shakespeare, and the whole tradition of nature poetry in English, to Hughes' particular canon of revered poets, to his wider reading and the shaping events of his life. He traces Hughes' painful journey from terror in the face of nature in his first three collections, through the transitional works from Crow to Cave Birds, to the transformation in Moortown and Remains of Elmet, culminating in the exultation of River. He argues that these three collections constitute the apex of Hughes' achievement, and are among the great works of world literature.
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Memoir by Daniel Huws!
Daniel Huws has just published his Memories of Ted Hughes 1952–1963 (Richard Hollis, 2010).
Daniel Huws was a close friend of Ted Hughes during their time in Cambridge. The small book was originally intended as a contribution to a book project to commemorate the 10th aniversary of Ted Hughes's death, which unfortunately was aborted.
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4 March 2010
You can now register for the international conference on Hughes at Pembroke College, Cambridge from 15 to 18 September 2010. Please note that places are limited! The plenary speakers will be Seamus Heaney and Jonathan Bate. The full programme of papers has just been published.
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15 December 2009
Douglas & McIntyre kindly sent me a podcast with Ehor Boyanowsky to publish here on the site. Click here to listen!
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Roy Davids has submitted a poem titled »The Day of his Funeral« for publication here. You can read it here.
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There is a new episode up at the Ted Hughes Archive Blog about Ted Hughes and Keith Douglas.
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15 November 2009
Roy Davids has submitted an unpublished essay titled »The Making of Birthday Letters« which refers to the archive recently acquired by the British Libary. You can read it here
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07 November 2009Coming soon: Sophie Pollard has submitted a new essay about the Oedipus myth in Crow to be published here in a few days.
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Keith Sagar wrote about a new book by Ehor Boyanowsky who was involved in the Wild Steelhead and Salmon interview a few years ago. The book is titled Savage Gods, Silver Ghosts: In the Wild with Ted Hughes and Keith has submitted a review of it here.
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Ann Skea informed me that Noel Chanan whom some of you may know for his portraits of Ted Hughes (used for Collected Poems, for example) has published a DVD with a discussion between Hughes and Baskin from the early eighties. For more information and orders, please visit his website http://www.artistandpoet.co.uk.
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Ann Skea has published a new transcript on her website. It is from a talk in which Ted Hughes introduces Icelandic author Thor Vilhjalmsson in 1996.
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There are news over on the Ted Hughes Archive Blog relating to Ted Hughes's relationship with the Queen Mother and more.
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04 September 2009
Susan Butterfield of Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, will host a seven-day guided walking tour of Yorkshire. You can download a PDF with details here and an itinery of the tour here.
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03 September 2009
There is a short video over at the Guardian website which features Donald Crossley and outdoor swimmer Kate Rew.
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03 September 2009
News from over at the Ted Hughes Archive Blog include an entry on unusual items and a notebook with entries recording places and dates for individual early poems.
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11 August 2009
The BBC runs several features on Ted Hughes an Mytholmroyd, including commentary by Donald Crossley and John Billingsley. The articles are:
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30 July 2009
Roger Elkin submitted a new essay for publication on this site! It is called »Hidden Influences in the Poetry of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath«
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The most recent edition of Helen Broderick's excellent Ted Hughes Archive Blog at the British Library reports on Hughes and Crow. Recommended!
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The Guardian reported that Carol Ann Duffy set up The Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry. The award will honour the most exciting work in that year. You can read about it here [Guardian website]. The Independent has more on Carol Ann Duffy and Laureateship.
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The Guardian also ran a story about the »lost« children's poem »Timmy the Tug«.You can read about it here [Guardian website]. The Telegraph also reports about the story.
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This year's »Ted Hughes Birthday Festival« in and around Hebden Bridge and Mytholmroyd will be held between 15 and 17 August. The Elmet Trust website has the details.
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The Telegraph ran an article on this year's Ted Hughes Memorial Lecture by Andrew Motion. You can read it here [Telegraph website]
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11 May 2009
The BBC will broadcast its Sylvia Plath episode of A Poet’s Guide to Britain on Monday 11 May at 8.30pm on BBCFour.
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11 May 2009
The Sixth International Ted Hughes Conference will take place at Pembroke College, Cambridge 15-18 September 2010 with plenary lectures from Seamus Heaney and Jonathan Bate. Other speakers include Simon Armitage, Keith Sagar, Ann Skea, Neil Roberts, Terry Gifford, Stephen Ennis, Neil Corcoran, Jo Gill, Usha V.T. and Chen Hong.
The conference stands under the heading »From Cambridge to Collected«.
Pembroke College established a website for the conference here.
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Carol Bere's review of The Letters of Ted Hughes is online!
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The Sixth International Ted Hughes Conference will take place at Pembroke College, Cambridge 15-18 September 2010 with plenary lectures from Seamus Heaney and Jonathan Bate. A website will soon be established for the conference by Pembroke College, but if you want to register an interest please contact Terry Gifford at T.Gifford@chi.ac.uk
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New Book by Terry Gifford: Terry's book Ted Hughes was published by Routledge in November 2008. From the blurb: "This is the first green reading of the life and works, including new evidence of Hughes's environmental activism that informed the poetry and essays. This book is in three parts: biography, a discussion of all the works and a review of the critical reception. It also includes a Chronology and annotated Further Reading offering the most complete single book on Hughes available."
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Very sad news is that Nicholas Hughes died by his own hand on March 16 in his home in Alaska. I do not know what to say, but there is plenty of material in the bigger newspapers (Times, Guardian, NY Times etc. of March 22/23). My sincere condolences.
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16 December 2008
News from Keith Sagar: Keith Sagar has copies for sale of most Hughes first editions, including signed limited editions. Please send your wants list to keithsagar@tiscali.co.uk.
Moreover, Cambridge University Press has reissued the second edition of The Art of Ted Hughes in paperback at £19.99. The Press's announcement is here.
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16 December 2008
Inside Intelligence will be doing a new production of Sylvia Plath's "Three Women" to be staged in London. The Guardian published further details in a review here.
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16 December 2008
New article by Edward Hadley: "Ted Hughes as an Elegist: The Vegetation Deity and Fertility Rites in 'Lupercalia'". Read it here.
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The University of Exeter has acquired a rare recording of Ted Hughes and Leonard Baskin and Carol Hughes has chosen to place her collection of Baskin proofs and drawings at Exeter too. For more information, please go to the university's news site.
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16 December 2008
Ann Skea reports on an uncollected poem find in the documents acquired by Hughes Hall College, Cambridge. She writes: "I was privileged to have access to the books before they went into store and, amongst other treasures, I came across an uncollected poem written for the birth of HRH Prince William. My description of this poem is now on my web-pages."
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British Library publishes Ted Hughes CD sets, "Ted Hughes: The Spoken Word", of recordings from the BBC archives
Ted Hughes: The Spoken Word: Poems and Short Stories
The British Library has published two double-CD sets of recordings from the BBC archives. Each set comes with a booklet containing a short essay by Alice Oswald and details on the recordings.
Set one, "The Spoken Word: Poems and Short Stories" (143 minutes), contains two short stories from Wodwo ("The Harvesting" and "Snow") as well as poems drawn mostly from Lupercal, Wodwo, Prometheus on his Crag, Crow, Remains of Elmet, Moortown Diary, Earth-Numb and Adam and the Sacred Nine.
Set two, "The Spoken Word: Poetry in the Making" (141 minutes), collects Hughes's talks for the "Listening and Writing" programme (incl. the poems read for illustrating the points made): "Capturing Animals", "Moon Creatures", "Learning to Think", "Writing about Landscape" and "Meet My Folks!" as well as two broadcasts featuring Season Songs almost in its entirety. A short talk on "Stealing Trout on a May Morning" is added as an extra.
Both sets are available from the British Library shop and from good booksellers.
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12 April 2007
Handcart Ensemble, a theater company devoted to works which are rich in language and that allow for imaginative use of the stage, is staging the first New York full production of the Ted Hughes "Alcestis" from April 19th – May 5th. For further information please access their web site at www.handcartensemble.org or go to this page.
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17 January 2007
Ann Skea has been adding plenty of exciting content to her website. Among the latest additions are
"'Creatures of Light': Why and how did Ted Hughes use Magic in his poetry? An historical perspective." -- her paper presented a t Emory, and
"Poetry and Magic 3: Capriccio : Capriccio and The Path of the Sword. Confronting and controlling the demons.", her new work in progress.
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17 January 2007
A revised edition of Keith Sagar's Ted Hughes: The Laughter of Foxes has been published in paperpack. More on this item soon. Here's a review by Ann Skea.
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17 January 2007
Neil Roberts has completed his book Ted Hughes: A Literary Life, published by Palgrave Macmillan. More on this as soon as a review copy comes in. In the meantime, read Ann Skea's review of the book.
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17 January 2007
A Happy New Year everyone. Apologies for the slow progress with getting the site relaunched. It's just one of many projects that need to get done so it takes a little longer than originally expected.
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12-ix-2006
Eilat Negev & Yehuda Koren wrote that their biography of Assia Wevill will be published in London late September 2006. The book will be titled "A Lover of Unreason". Follow this link to read the publisher's note for the book.
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23-viii-2006
Joanny Moulin will present a sub-plenary paper at the ESSE Conference in London this September. It is titled "Ted Hughes's Impossible Biography" and will be given Thursday 31 August, 12 noon -- 1.15pm at the Institute of English Studies, University of London, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU
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Roy Davids has updated his site with a new essay titled "Ted Hughes Tabletalk - a Counterblast", in which he answers Horatio Morpurgo's article of 2001. You will find the essays under the "Articles" Menu.
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Finally, while the migration to Typo3 is ongoing (see news entry of 12-vi-2006) this site has received StudySphere's Award of Excellence.
12-vi-2006
First Emory Conference Publication
Steve Enniss sent news on the publication of four papers from the Emory Conference. The little booklet, which was edited by Ron Schuchard, is titled Fixed Stars Govern A Life: Transforming Poetics And Memory With Emory's Ted Hughes Archive. Included are:
The pamphlet comes with an introduction by Ron Schuchard and has appeared as No 6 in the Emory Across Academe series.
A small number of copies are available free of charge. To order contact Kathleen Carroll at libmkc@emory.edu
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Website Issues
If you are wondering about the recent scarcity of updates -- I'm in the process of migrating the entire site to a content management system. As the site completes its 11th year, it is time to put it on proper feet to get on top of the wealth of content and make it manageable once again. What will it mean? Among other advantages, the site will get a better layout and readability, accessibility of content will improve and there will be a proper site search engine. Moreover, I'll add modules that will allow selected contributors to add and manage their own content, special news corners etc. There'll also be RSS feeds so you'll always be up-to-date on what's going on, and much more.
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6-iv-2006
Carol Bere just forwarded some exciting news about the project for a Ted Hughes Centre in Mytholmroyd. According to the Yorkshire Post (3 April), over £2m were pledged for the centre which is to be housed in the former Mytholmroyd railway station. Yorkshire Forward, a regional regeneration agency, is to contribute £1,153,000, the Heritage Lottery Fund will give £1m to the project and further money will come from Calderdale Council (£185,000), the Railway Heritage Trust (£45,000) and HBOS (£50,000).
According to Alan Brooks, chairman of Mytholmroyd's Royd Regeneration, »negotiations for the lease on the old railway station are progressing and a business plan has been commissioned.« It is planned that the Ted Hughes Centre will eventually incorporate an archive, educational facilities and possibly a café and bookshop.
The article further reports that the »proposals have also been given fresh impetus following the inaugural meeting of the Elmet Trust, a new organisation which, when formally constituted, will be responsible for managing the birthplace of Hughes – 1 Aspinal Street, as well as the proposed centre and additional property close to the station.
The trust also plans to hold an annual festival in Mytholmroyd on Hughes's birthday – August 17 – to commemorate the poet's life and work.«
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19-ii-2006
Keith Sagar has published his Literature and the Crime against Nature, which also contains a chapter on Ted Hughes. A short review by Hans Beihl here.
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22-i-2006
A late happy New Year everybody.
A review of Ted Hughes's Collected Poems for Children and further details about the book have been published on this site. Ann Skea also has a review of the book on her site. [Link(s) will open in new window]
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14-xi-2005
Edinburgh Conference schedule published! Click here to read it.
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13-xi-2005
Ted Hughes' Collected Poems for Children has been published by Faber & Faber on 5 October 2005. Further information and a review soon on this site. [Link(s) will open in new window]
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13-xi-2005
Rachel Beckett, a wood engraver who has made some illustrations of Ted Hughes' Tales from Ovid, has set up a web site at www.stuchburypress.co.uk. [Link(s) will open in new window]
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13-xi-2005
Sylvia Plath's sketch of Ted Hughes (see entry for 26 Aug.) below) was acquired by the National Portrait Gallery.
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26-x-2005
The current (October/November) issue of the Rare Book Review (published in London) contains an article about Plath, Hughes, and the Grolier Club exhibition by Melissa Maday. It includes several photos from the exhibition as illustrations. [Link(s) will open in new window]
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18-x-2005
The Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford, is pleased to announce FRIEDA HUGHES: »Poetry as Footprints.« Frieda Hughes talks about her life through her poetry. Monday 24 October, 5pm, Rothermere American Institute, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3TG. www.ox.ac.uk For further information, contact Cheryl Hudson on 01865 282711 or email academic.programme@rai.ox.ac.uk [Link(s) will open in new window]
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The Emory Conference was a very enjoyable, fruitful and stimulating event – great many thanks to the organisers and the team in the Special Collection Archives! A short summary of the conference will be published soon on this site.
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26-ix-2005
Changes to the preliminary Schedule for Emory Conference.
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15-ix-2005
Exhibition at the Grolier Club, New York: "No Other Appetite." Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, and the Blood Jet of Poetry. The exhibition was curated by Karen V. Kukil and Stephen C. Enniss and will run through 19 November 2005. The Grolier Club, 47 East 60th Street, New York, NY 10022, www.grolierclub.org [Link(s) will open in new window]
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12-ix-2005
The address of the Ted Hughes Conference Website has changed. Details can be accessed on this site or at http://specialcollections.library.emory.edu/
Events/hughesconference.html [Link(s) will open in new window].
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26-viii-2005: New Project by Matthew Howard; Course by Terry Gifford; Emory Conference Schedule; Sketch of Ted Hughes by Sylvia Plath
»I am currently working on a project focused on the Hughes letters held within the various archives.
I would like to review all of the Hughes correspondence that is archived and condense it down into individual ›cribs‹. These could be as simple as providing the basic information such as date written, where from, who to, number of pages of handwritten/typed and so on, but will also include brief details of the content of the letter. In other words, the crib could highlight where exactly TH writes about his own work, the work of others, ecology, biographical facts, animal life etc. My idea is that these cribs could then be made available to scholars which would ultimately save time in the archive, or even visting the archive as, if done thoroughly, the information would be pinpointed to specific, individual letters. It may also be possible to put the 'cribs' into a computer database which would enable even easier searching.
This idea evolved out of the intial thought of my producing a calendar of all of TH's extant letters. Doubtless there will be a collected letters produced at some stage and it would be essential to trace and have copies of each letter as soon as possible as those not in collections are always at risk of being lost forever. That said this original idea is likely to be too great for one person, in the tracing alone. Formulating the calendar thereafter would also be a mammoth task. Thus, the idea of doing the same kind of thing for the letters in the various archives is a kind of smaller version, but with the additional perceived benefit of making a searchable database to aid Hughes scholarship.«
Matthew Howard
A tentative Schedule of the Ted Hughes Conference @ Emory has been published. Please click the Link to view it on this site.
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Update on Terry Gifford's one-week course:
‘Ted Hughes - a study week’ with Dr. Terry Gifford, Oct 22nd – Oct 29th 2005 at the Almàssera Vella - Relleu SPAIN
MANY OF THE CENTRAL themes of Ted Hughes’s poetry concerning the relations between humans and the environment are present in the landscape and culture of this part of Spain. Hughes and Plath chose to spend their honeymoon in 1956 in the little fishing village of Benidorm. We will visit the house they stayed in. New and Selected Poems 1957-1994 will be the set text for this course – some references will be made to Collected Poems for those seeking further reading. We will use active individual or paired readings exercises in preparation for group discussion – not a master-class but an open exploration into the richly texture meanings of the poems. This will be of special interest to teachers of literature at any level as well as the interested general reader. Adjustments to cater for individual interests can be made. Each day will begin by exploring key questions via specific texts – ‘How do we read and discuss a poem by Ted Hughes?” “What are the manifesto poems and where rooted?” “Plath/Hughes: a working relationship?” “What were the final achievements and frustrations?”
DR TERRY GIFFORD was former Reader in Literature and Environment at the University of Leeds. He co-wrote a monograph on Ted Hughes in 1981 and is currently engaged in assembling the Complete Critical Guide of his work for Routledge. He is the author of five collections of poetry, his latest being The Unreliable Mushrooms: New and Selected Poems (Bradford: Redbeck, 2003
RELLEU, Iberian in origin, is nowadays an unspoilt mountain village in the Marina Baja Range, a half hour drive from the sea. The village has a 10th century castle and a fine calvary. Bars, pharmacy and shops are a few minutes walk from the Almassera.
ALMASSERA VELLA was Relleu’s original olive press now fully refurbished as a Literature and Arts Centre and Retreat. Delightful bedrooms and bathrooms, generous reception, deep loggia, 3000 book library, and extensive rear terrace with swimming pool and almond orchard plus ruined Moorish farm-house and an olive grove.
£435 all inclusive (7 nights) save travel and insurance.
(Fly Alicante Airport – Easyjet, Flybe, Monarch BMI Baby etc)
Apply : Christopher and Marisa North
‘Almàssera Vella’
Carrer de la Mare de Deu del Miracle 56,
Relleu 03578 Alicante SPAIN –
(0034) 966 856003
oldolivepress@tiscali.es - web: www.oldolivepress.com
To Book; £50 cheque to ‘Pemberton North SL’
Sketch of Ted Hughes made by Sylvia Plath in 1957 to be auctioned on 3 October at Bonhams, London. Many thanks to Carol Bere for pointing this out to me.
Articles @ bbc.co.uk,(includes image), bonhams.com, guardian.co.uk [Link(s) will open in new window]
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2-vi-2005
Terry Gifford will run a one-week course on Hughes for www.oldolivepress.com in Spain October 22-29. [Link(s) will open in new window]
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A major exhibition on Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes will open in New York in the fall. Entitled »›No Other Appetite‹: Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes and the Blood Jet of Poetry,« it will run at the Grolier Club of New York from September 14 – November 19, 2005. The show is being curated by Karen Kukil of Smith College, and Stephen Enniss of Emory University, and the books, manuscripts, photographs and other objects on display have been drawn from the impressive archives of both institutions. A more detailed press release is available on the Grolier Club website: http://www.grolierclub.org/ExPlathHughes.htm. [Link(s) will open in new window]
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21-v-2005
Roger Rees, kindly informed me that Edinburgh University will host a conference »Ted Hughes and the Classics«, to be held by the School of History and Classics, November 25th–27th 2005. For further information, please click here.
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09-v-2005
Terry Gifford has kindly sent a piece in memory of Len Scigaj. You can read it here.
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21-iv-2005
Sad news has just come in that Leonard Scigaj died on 16 April 2005.
I met Len only briefly during the 2000 conference in Lyon; he was a very friendly and open man, someone who was great to talk and discuss with, lively and humorous. Len's work on Ted Hughes includes three books – The Poetry of Ted Hughes, Ted Hughes, Critical Essays on Ted Hughes (ed.) –, and various essays and articles.
A fuller obituary may be found at the Virginia Tech Website [Link(s) will open in new window]
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7-iii-2005
Plans for the Ted Hughes Centre in Mytholmroyd have seen a major setback as a major source of funding was withdrawn. Yet, there is no sense of giving up. Read more on www.mytholmroyd.net [Link(s) will open in new window]
Ted Hughes' birthplace, 1 Aspinall St in Mytholmroyd, has been sold. Apparently, it is to be rented out for holiday let and funds will go towards the Ted Hughes Centre.
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26-ii-2005
Call for Papers: »Fixed Stars Govern a Life«: the 5th International Ted Hughes Conference
October 5-7, 2005, Robert W. Woodruff Library, Emory University, Atlanta, USA
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29-i-2005
The Times reported on the find of an unpublished poem with British bankers Duncan Lawrie, www.duncan-lawrie.co.uk [Link(s) will open in new window]