Welcome to the Ted Hughes Society podcast.

As you may know, one of Ted Hughes’s first books, published in 1961, was Meet My Folks, a collection of humorous poems for children about an imagined family. Having reached episode 26 of this podcast, it seems time to introduce some of our folks - the officers of the Ted Hughes Society, who are responsible for such things as building and updating the society’s website; compiling the excellent bibliography which is one of the features of the website; organising the forthcoming conference at Pembroke College, Cambridge this coming September; and acquiring new items for the rapidly growing archive of books and other items associated with Ted Hughes, which is housed at Pembroke, and some choice items from which are now on show in two joint exhibitions at Pembroke College and the Cambridge University Library.

The guests for this episode are Catherine Macnaughton and Anna Stevenson - the editor and designer, respectively, of our two regular publications, the peer reviewed academic journal Ted Hughes Studies, and Recklings, the newsletter for members of the Ted Hughes Society which is being put together as this podcast episode is released and will be emailed to society members soon.

Catherine Macnaughton is the editor of both Ted Hughes Studies and Recklings, and has a professional background in newspaper and magazine journalism. She recently returned to university to study English Literature and has an MA from the University of Cambridge and from University College London.

Dr Anna Stevenson is production designer for Ted Hughes Studies and Recklings at the Ted Hughes Society, and the host of the Ted Hughes Society's Book Club. She is also a trustee at the Philip Larkin Society and currently works at the Brynmor Jones Library at the University of Hull. Anna has been a student at the university for ten years. During this time, she completed both her Bachelors and Master of Arts in English and has also recently graduated from her PhD in English, with a thesis titled 'My Sacred Canon': The Influence of Shakespeare, W.B. Yeats, and T.S. Eliot on the Young Ted Hughes'. Anna has strong family ties to Patrington, Holderness, where Ted Hughes did National Service, before her studying at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and where Anna's interest in Ted Hughes's connections with the area resides.

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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This episode of the Ted Hughes Society podcast is a reading of his own poems by Grahame Davies - poet, author, editor, librettist, psycho-geographer, literary critic and member of the Ted Hughes Society.

Graham was brought up in the former coal mining village of Coedpoeth near Wrexham in north east Wales, and received a BA (Hons) in English from Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridgeand a doctorate from the University of Wales for research into the writings of R. S. Thomas, Saunders Lewis, T.S. Eliot and Simone Weil.

Grahame worked as a journalist, for newspapers and then for the BBC, where he became News gathering Editor for BBC Wales before joining the Royal Household as Assistant Private Secretary to The Prince of Wales, later King Charles, becoming Deputy Private Secretary. Grahame left the royal household in October 2023 to become Director of Mission and Strategy for the Church in Wales.

Grahame is the author of 20 books including poetry collections in both Welsh and English, psycho-geography, novels, and intercultural studies. As a librettist and lyricist, he has collaborated with many leading composers including Sir Karl Jenkins, Paul Mealor, Sarah Class, Debbie Wiseman, Roderick Williams and Joanna Gill, and his song Sacred Fire - to music by Sarah Class - was performed by Pretty Yende at the coronation of King Charles and Queen Camilla in 2023.

As a Welsh language poet, he is the author of three solo volumes. In 1997, his first volume, Adennill Tir (Barddas), a book arising from the 11 years he spent in Merthyr Tydfil in the south Wales Valleys, won the Harri Webb Memorial Prize.[3] In 2001, his second volume, Cadwyni Rhyddid (Barddas), was awarded the Wales Arts Council's 2002 Book of the Year award at the Hay on Wye Festival.

As an English language poet, he published a bilingual volume of poetry, Ffiniau/Borders, jointly with Elin ap Hywel, with Gomer press in 2002, and his in English, Lightning Beneath the Sea, was published by Seren Press in 2012. His second, A Darker Way, also from Seren, appeared in 2024.

Interfaith relations have been one of his major concerns, and in 2002, Seren published his study, The Chosen People, examining the relationship of the Welsh and the Jewish people as reflected in literature; a second study on Wales and Islam, The Dragon and the Crescent, also from Seren, was published in 2011.

Grahame was a board member of the Welsh Academi from 2005-2011 and Welsh language editor of Poetry Wales magazine until 2002. Grahame is a frequent contributor of articles and reviews to journals and his work has been widely translated and anthologised. He was Vice President of Goodenough College in London and an Honorary Research Fellow in Cardiff University. In 2023 Graham was made a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order.

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.)

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to a pre-Christmas feast of seasonal and Christmas poetry and story and read by members of the Ted Hughes Society who are also highly accomplished published writers. Many thanks you to James Longwill, Terry Gifford, Matt Howard, Alison Light, Katherine Robinson, David Day and Grahame Davies for such an extraordinarily varied, thought-provoking and in so many ways profoundly engaging collection of seasonal writing. And we wish all listeners to the the Ted Hughes Society podcast a very happy Christmas and a blessed and joyous New Year.

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.)

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.