Welcome to the latest Ted Hughes Society podcast.
This episode is released just before the Society’s Conference, entitled The Legacy of Ted Hughes, to be held at Hughes’s former college, Pembroke College, Cambridge, and our guest, for this most recent episode in our short season of talks by prominent members of the society, is Dr. Mike Sweeting. Mike is a member of the society’s council, with a particular responsibility for constitutional matters. Like many prominent members of the society, Mike has undertaken post-graduate study on the work of Ted Hughes, in Mike’s case, focusing on Hughes’s deep interest in and knowledge of anthropology.
Ted Hughes went up to Cambridge to study English Literature, but in his final year changed to Archaeology and Anthropology - reportedly, following a visionary dream of burnt fox, which he claimed warned him that his continued formal study of English Literature was destroying the poems that were existing in some potential form in either his subconscious or some otherworld.
Like Hughes, Mike was born and raised in the rural North of England, where Mike’s father was a farmer. However, Mike decided against the farming life, entering Durham University where he progressed from his first degree to eventual doctoral studies. Since completing his PhD Mike has been involved in three areas of work, often simultaneously. He has been a scholar of the poetry of both Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, but also a church leader and Christian Pastor, and a businessman and business consultant. He has advised owners of businesses on Mergers & Acquisitions and has also established corporate finance firms in 15 countries and has been chairman of a charity working in India, the USA, Canada, Romania and Argentina.
Mike has been a keen rock climber and target shooter since the age of 15.
if you have any comments about the podcast, any suggestions for furture episodes, or would like any information on the Ted Hughes Society, please contact me by email at membership@thetedhughesssociety. I look forward to hearing from you, and please do subscribe, rate and review this podcast; it does help others who might be interested in poetry, or the work of Ted Hughes, to find the podcast.
The opening and closing music is from Beethoven's String Quartet No 14, opus 131, performed by the Orion String Quartet. (The extract is reproduced under Creative Commons licence IMSLP: Creative Commons Atribution Non-commercial No Derivative 3.0.)
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