Birthday quote 17th August

Ted Hughes
Edward James "Ted" Hughes, OM, OBE, FRSL was an English poet and children's writer. Critics frequently rank him as one of the best poets of his generation, and one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. He served as Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death. In 2008 The Times ranked Hughes fourth on their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".

Hughes loved hunting and fishing, swimming and picnicking with his family. He later recalled that he was fascinated by animals, collecting and drawing toy lead creatures. He acted as retriever when his elder brother gamekeeper shot magpies, owls, rats and curlews, growing up surrounded by the harsh realities of working farms. His earliest poem "The Thought Fox", and earliest story "The Rain Horse" were recollections of the area where he grew up.

In 1951, Hughes initially studied English at Pembroke College, but attended few lectures and wrote no more poetry at this time, feeling stifled by literary academia and the "terrible, suffocating, maternal octopus" of literary tradition. In his third year, he transferred to anthropology and archaeology. After university, living in London and Cambridge, Hughes went on to have many varied jobs including working as a rose gardener, a nightwatchman, a reader for a film company and washing up at London Zoo.

He met the American poet Sylvia Plath in 1956. Hughes and Plath dated and then were married at St George the Martyr Holborn, on 16 June 1956, four months after they had first met. That year they each had poems published and Hughes's manuscript for his collection Hawk In The Rain won a poetry competition run by the Poetry centre of the Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association of New York. The first prize was publication by Harper, garnering Hughes widespread critical acclaim with the book's release and resulting in him winning a Somerset Maugham Award.

Hughes and Plath had two children. In the summer of 1962 Hughes began an affair with another woman and Hughes and Plath separated in the autumn of 1962 . In 2017 previously unpublished letters were described in which Plath accuses Hughes of physically abusing her months before she miscarried their second child in 1961. Beset by depression, and with a history of suicide attempts, Plath took her own life on 11 February 1963. Hughes was devastated. In a letter to an old friend of Plath's from Smith College, he wrote, "That's the end of my life. The rest is posthumous." Some feminists and some American admirers of Plath blamed him for her death. His last poetic work, Birthday Letters (1998), explored their complex relationship. A poem discovered in October 2010, Last letter, describes what happened during the three days before her death.

He became the Poet Laureate on 28th December 1984 and remained in the position until his death.

Born 17th August 1930 in Yorkshire, England
Died 28th October 1998 in London, England

What's writing really about? It's about trying to take fuller possession of the reality of your life.

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