The Ted Hughes Society Podcast

A reading of his own poems by Hugh Dunkerley, poet, Professor of Literature and a member of the Ted Hughes Society. Hugh has published two collections of poetry with the Cinnamon Press, Hare in 2010 and Kin in 2019, from which he will be reading.Hugh grew up in Edinburgh and Bath and studied at the universities of Southampton and Chichester. His PhD thesis was entitled Poetry as Via Negativa: A Creative Enquiry. Via negativa means the study of what not to do and was originally a theological term for explaining what God is by examining what he is not.Hugh’s other academic writing includes Earthographies, Ecocriticism and Culture co-authored with Wendy Wheeler and published by Lawrence and Wishart in 2008; a chapter on religious poetry from 1960 to 2015 in the Wiley-Blackwell Companion to British and Irish Poetry which was published in 2020; and an essay on Ted Hughes and Creative Writing in Ted Hughes in Context which was edited by former chair of the Ted Hughes Society Terry Gifford and published by Cambridge University Press in 2018.Hugh has received an Eric Gregory Award and a Hawthornden Fellowship and was the Sussex Poet Laureate.Gregory Leadbetter, reviewing Hugh’s most recent collection Kin in The London Magazine wrote that Hugh’s poems ‘present humane and often moving explorations of life both within and beyond the self. Children parents and parenthood, ecological and psychological crises and meditations on the interconnectedness of living things are its principal themes. the collection more often reveals its ecological anxieties in their chronic effects on human beings – not least, the reader can assume, on the poet himself. Despite bearing witness to that experience, Kin ultimately embodies a structure of affirmation: a coming-through, and a testament (in the words of ‘First Contact’) to ‘life’s / infinite scribblings’. Hare (2010) was published by Cinnamon Press. ISBN: 978-1-907090-08-0Kin (2019) was also published by Cinnamon Press. ISBN: 978-1-78864-017-6At the time of releasing this podcast both books were avilable from Amazon.co.uk. For more information on Hugh Dunkerley you can go the University of Chichester's website https://www.chi.ac.uk/people/hugh-dunkerley/ and you can follow Hugh on X at @Hughdunkerley1. If you would like to find out more about the Ted Hughes Society, you can visit the society’s website at thetedhugessociety.org, or you can email me, Mick Gowar, at membership@thetedhughessociety.orgThe 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.) 

This is the third episode of the podcast to focus on Ted Hughes's Gaudete, the book which distinguished British composer Stuart MacRae described in his programme note to his setting of eight parts of the poem as: 'Part film scenario, part novel, part poetry collection, it passes through a series of different states and modes of expression, from the hallucinatory prose-poem of the Prologue, through the interconnected narrative poems of the text’s main body, to the Epilogue, which consists of a short prose introduction followed by forty-five short poems – some of the most abstract and dense in Hughes’s entire oeuvre. Despite the relative directness of the narrative section’s style and form, the Epilogue poems – and indeed the book as a whole – do not yield their meanings easily; one might even describe them as abstruse. Their power lies in the ability to communicate, through sudden and powerful images that confront the reader with shocking clarity, the most profound, surprising and elemental propositions.' (1)   In this podcast Mike Wilson reflects on the dramatic pace of the piece, and how compelling and immersive the experience of reading Gaudete can be, and the meaning of the title: Gaudete = Rejoice.    Mike Wilson is Professor of Drama and Creative Arts at Loughborough University. Mike is an expert on Grand Guignol, a form of theatre which alternates short pieces depicting horror and the erotic which was originally performed at the Grand Guignol theatre in Paris. Mike is also an expert on storytelling and folklore, and is director of Loughborough University’s Storytelling Academy which has pioneered Applied Storytelling: using storytelling for social purposes such as exploring strategies to cope with loneliness, and using storytelling as a tool for reconciliation and co-operation between individuals and organisations with opposing or competing aims or views.       Mike’s many publications include Storytelling and Theatre: Professional Storytellers and Their Art, published by Palgrave in 2005; Grand Guignolesque: classic and contemporary horror theatre, co-edited with Richard J Hand and published in 2022 by the University of Exeter Press; and The Midnight Washerwoman and other Lower Breton Tales, , a collection of Mike’s translations, published this year by Princeton University Press in their Oddly Modern Fairytales series. For detailed information on Mike's publications please go to https://publications.lboro.ac.uk/publications/all/collated/eamw4.html and for further information on the work of the Storytelling Academy please go to https://storytellingacademy.education/   (1): https://www.wisemusicclassical.com/work/35874/Gaudete--Stuart-MacRae/ If you would like to find out more about the Ted Hughes Society, you can visit the society’s website at thetedhugessociety.org, or you can email me, Mick Gowar, at membership@thetedhughessociety.orgThe 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.) 

This is the second episode of the podcast to focus on Gaudete, the book which even admirers of Hughes often find his most puzzling and difficult.      Gaudete began as a scenario for a film in 1962. According to Elaine Feinstein in her biography of Ted Hughes, it was sent to a Swedish film director, almost certainly Ingmar Bergman. However, according to Mark Ford, in an article in the London Review of Books,  Bergman never received it, but from the nascent script Hughes developed the version of Gaudete we have which was eventually published in 1977. In this podcast Mike Wilson looks at the book in terms of its theatricality - examining the drama which is acted out by the characters, and comparable performance traditions including Grand Guignol, folk horror, and burlesque song, in particular The Castleford Ladies Magic Circle by Jake Thackray.    Mike Wilson is Professor of Drama and Creative Arts at Loughborough University. Mike is an expert on Grand Guignol, a form of theatre which alternates short pieces depicting horror and the erotic which was originally performed at the Grand Guignol theatre in Paris. Mike is also an expert on storytelling and folklore, and is director of Loughborough University’s Storytelling Academy which has pioneered Applied Storytelling - using storytelling for social purposes such as exploring strategies to cope with loneliness, and using storytelling as a tool for reconciliation and co-operation between individuals and organisations with opposing or competing aims or views.       Mike’s many publications include Storytelling and Theatre: Professional Storytellers and Their Art, published by Palgrave in 2005; Grand Guignolesque: classic and contemporary horror theatre,  co-edited with Richard J Hand and published in 2022 by the University of Exeter Press; and published this year by Princeton University Press in their Oddly Modern Fairytales series, The Midnight Washerwoman and other Lower Breton Tales, a collection of Mike’s translations. For detailed information on Mike's publications please go to https://publications.lboro.ac.uk/publications/all/collated/eamw4.html and for further information on the work of the Storytelling Academy please go to https://storytellingacademy.education/       If you would like to find out more about the Ted Hughes Society, you can visit the society’s website at thetedhugessociety.org, or you can email me, Mick Gowar, at membership@thetedhughessociety.orgThe 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.) 

This podcast is rather different from the previous podcasts. Rather than consisting of either readings of poems or prose by Ted Hughes, or a talk or discussion focusing on some aspect of the work of Ted Hughes, this podcast pays tribute to the inspiration that Ted Hughes’s poetry continues to provide to other writers.  Four members of the Ted Hughes Society - Mark Haworth-Booth, Michael McCall, James Longwill and Terry Gifford - have recorded themselves reading poems which they have composed which they feel are in some way indebted to Ted Hughes example and the pleasure and encouragement to their own creativity that reading Hughes’s work has given them. My grateful thanks to all four poets for such excellent readings.This podcast represents a little of the remarkable amount of creative talent which exists within the Ted Hughes Society and I hope we can make these kinds of podcasts a regular part of the programme.If you would like to find out more about the Ted Hughes Society, you can visit the society’s website at thetedhugessociety.org, or you can email me, Mick Gowar, at membership@thetedhughessociety.orgThe 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.)

Ann Skea, expert on Ted Hughes and spirituality, the occult and the Goddess reflects on the vacanas, the short 'hymns and psalms to a nameless female deity' which end the epilogue to Gaudete (first published 1977). Introduced by Katherine Robinson.Ann Skea was born in England and migrated to Australia with her husband and children in 1967. She lived in Hong Kong between 1976 and 1979, and currently lives in Sydney, although for family reasons, she also spends a good deal of time in London. Ann is trained as a pharmacist. She has a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and English literature, a master’s degree in literature and a Ph.D. She obtained her degree as a mature-age student at the University of New England in Australia. Her doctorate and the area of her continuing scholarly research concerns the work of the late British Poet Laureate, Ted Hughes. Ann is the author of Ted Hughes: The Poetic Quest (University of New England, 1994), and is an internationally recognized and widely published scholar specializing in the work of Ted Hughes. Her Ted Hughes web pages (https://ann.skea.com/THHome.htm) are archived by the British Library. She is a regular book reviewer for various magazines and is a freelance writer and photographer specializing in travel, myth and culture. She has also published widely in magazines and journals. In 2016, Ann Skea was elected as an associate scholar at Pembroke College, Cambridge.The podcast is once again introduced by Katherine Robinson. Katherine is a research student at Pembroke College, Cambridge, working on how Ted Hughes reimagined and retold early Celtic mythology in his poetry, and is the bibliographer for the Ted Hughes Society. Before coming to Pembroke College Katherine studied at Ameherst College, Massachusetts and Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in The London Magazine, Poetry Ireland, Kenyon Review, and The Hudson Review.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.)

This episode looks at the extensive and rapidly growing Ted Hughes archive which is housed at Hughes's old college, Pembroke College, Cambridge. Contributing to this podcast are Lizzy Einnon-Smith and Mark Wormald. The podcast is introduced by Katherine Robinson.Lizzy graduated from St. Hilda's College, Oxford, and is Archivist at Pembroke College, Cambridge. She was formerly an Archivist at St. Catherine's College, Cambridge and King's College, Cambridge, and Records Manager at Girton College, Cambridge. As Archivist at Pembroke College it has been Lizzy's responsibility to organise and catalogue the rapidly expanding Ted Hughes archive to enable it to be used for future research into the life and work of Ted Hughes. Lizzy also maintains the website of the Cambridge Archivists' Group: https://cambridgearchivistsgroup.wordpress.com/about/Mark Wormald is a Fellow of Pembroke College Cambridge, and Director of Studies for Part 2 English. Much of the recent expansion of the Ted Hughes archive at Pembroke College has been as a result of Mark's efforts, in particular the acquisition of Barrie Cooke's papers. Mark is the author of The Catch: Fishing for Ted Hughes (Bloomsbury) which was described by The Times as a 'beautifully written portrait of the poet explores his life and work through his passion for fishing.' Mark is Chair of the Ted Hughes Society.Katherine Robinson is a research student at Pembroke College Cambridge, working on how Ted Hughes reimagined and retold early Celtic mythology in his poetry. Before coming to Pembroke College, Katherine studied at Ameherst College, Massachusetts and Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and worked in a marine mammal sanctuary in the Shetland Islands. Katherine is the bibliographer for the Ted Hughes Society.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.)