Why Ted Hughes’ poetry needed ‘tinkering’

HE was a Titan of the written word.

Now, almost 20 years after his death, one of those closest to Ted Hughes has sought to explode some of the myths surrounding the man and his work.

At the launch of the Ted Hughes Network, dedicated to researching and commemorating the Yorkshire-born ex-Laureate, poets and academics gathered at the University of Huddersfield to recall the uniqueness of his personality, poetry and technique.

Born in Mytholmroyd in 1930, Ted Hughes fed much of his Yorkshire experiences into his work over many years.

Among those who knew him well, and who had a close personal and professional relationship with him, was the poet Christopher Reid.

As an editor at the firm Faber & Faber in the 1990s, he worked with Hughes on some of his last works and, after his death in 1998, edited Hughes’ letters for publication.

In conversation with Dr Steve Ely at the university’s Heritage Quay archives centre, Mr Reid said it had been a “thrill and honour” to edit Hughes’ work.

“It was also remarkably easy. Not that Ted Hughes turned in perfect poems. He turned in great poems that occasionally required editorial tinkering.”

Before meeting Hughes for the first time, Mr Reid had heard myths and rumours about the poet’s personality.

“They were entirely misleading. He was completely approachable, without any pomposity or side.

“He engaged you directly in conversation and I have never met anyone who had the same aptitude for drawing you into his attention as he talked.”

Christopher Reid said that Hughes could be “fairly wayward” in his spelling, his punctuation and his syntax, and when it came to editing his letters – for a volume published in 2007 – he allowed the spontaneity to remain.

But he told how, several years earlier, the draft of Ted Hughes’s long 1997 poem Tales from Ovid displayed similar idiosyncrasies in punctuation and syntax. This time they were sorted out, with the poet’s permission.

“I have slightly regretted it ever since,” said Mr Reid, “because I know that some of the vitality of the letters comes from those oddities. I wish I could have seen a way of retaining that in Tales from Ovid. Maybe that was a case where editorial meddling wasn’t an improvement.”

Mr Reid joined poets Ian Parks and Carola Luther for readings and recitations. The event was the first of many taking place over the next two years, including a Ted Hughes and Creative Writing Symposium in 2018.