Ted Hughes Network celebrates first major conference

The two-day conference examined the poet laureate’s biggest influences from the natural and metaphysical world around him

A NETWORK at the University of Huddersfield dedicated to researching the life and work of the renowned Yorkshire-born poet Ted Hughes, celebrated its first anniversary with an international conference.

Literary experts from around the world attended the two-day event, entitled Ted Hughes and Place andexamined the writer’s biggest influences from the natural and metaphysical world around him, Hughes’ social and cultural issues and the influence of Ted Hughes on poets and artists during his lifetime and after his death.

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The conference was organised by Dr Steve Ely, Director of the Ted Hughes Network (THN) and Dr James Underwood a THN Research Fellow and was held in partnership with the Ted Hughes Society.

Opening the event was the first of four keynotes speeches by world-leading Ted Hughes experts.  Professor Terry Gifford from Bath Spa University gave his talk, Hughes’s Notion of Shamanic Healing, which was a bringing together of his latest research into the shamanism and healing powers of Ted Hughes’ poetry.

The audience on the second day heard Dr Heather Clark, who is a Visiting International Professor of the University’s Ted Hughes Network, read excerpts from an up-and-coming literary biography she is writing on Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes’s wife for seven years until her death in 1963.  The biography will draw on unpublished letters from Sylvia Plath and is due to be available at the end of 2018.

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THN Director Dr Ely said the book will be the most definitive piece of work on Plath and Hughes for a decade.

An interesting analysis of the relationship between Hughes to the author D.H. Lawrence by Emeritus Professor Neil Roberts, University of Sheffield, closed the first day of the conference.  He demonstrated a number of parallels between Hughes and Lawrence and suggested that Ted Hughes’ biggest influences from the early part of the 20^th century were the authors T.S. Eliot, William Butler Yeats and D.H. Lawrence, unlike many who think the third biggest influence should be Ezra Pound.

Closing the event was Dr Mark Wormald from Pembroke College, University of Cambridge in which he read from his research paper Irishwards: Ted Hughes, Freedom and Flow.  He spoke about Ted Hughes’s stay in the West Coast of Ireland and described how Barrie Cooke, an Irish painter, had been good friends with Hughes since the early 60s right up to his death. 

“Mark Wormald’s paper was actually quite touching,” said Dr Ely, “not least in the revelations of how highly Barrie Cooke rated Hughes’s work and the close, temperamental congeniality they shared.

“His paper demonstrated how Hughes seemed to find a freedom in the West Coast of Ireland that he couldn’t find elsewhere.  The attraction wasn’t just the salmon fishing, which Hughes loved, but in a sense of the Atlantic coast of Ireland as somewhere he could relax and breathe,” he said.

Proving that Ted Hughes isn’t solely an English affair, the remainder of the conference saw papers delivered by Ted Hughes scholars stretching from across the globe and Research Fellow Dr Underwood said the response to the conference had been overwhelmingly positive from everyone.

“With twenty-five rich and diverse papers by speakers from all over the UK, Europe, and North America, and a really interested and engaged audience, it’s been a big success and Ted Hughes’ scholarship has advanced a few stages as a result. 

This event has also consolidated the University of Huddersfield’s place on the map as a centre of excellence for Hughes research and activities. 

Dr James Underwood

Ted Hughes and Place also included a poetry reading from multi-award winning poet Andrew McMillan whose debut collection physical was the first-ever poetry collection to win The Guardian First Book Award.

Next year’s event will be a creative writing symposium looking at the creative writing process of Ted Hughes and what made his writing so distinctive.  Also on the year’s agenda is the tri-annual conference of the Ted Hughes Society, which will take place in Cardiff.