Listening to Radio 4 this morning was a particular delight as I heard that Ted Hughes is to be commemorated in Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey – named as such because of the number of poets, playwrights, and writers buried and commemorated there, including Shakespeare, Edmund Spencer, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Samuel Johnson, and Sir Laurence Olivier.
The slate slab that has been chosen represents his love of poetry, fishing, and his adopted county, Devon. Designed by the Devon stonemason Ronald Parsons, it was carved as he listened to recordings of Hughes reading his own work. It has been inscribed with lines from his poem That Morning recalling a day when he stood deep in an Alaskan stream as a shoal of salmon flickered by: 'So we found the end of our journey, So we stood alive in the river of light, Among the creatures of light, creatures of light'. The commemoration will be unveiled at 6pm today at the foot of the memorial to TS Eliot – Hughes's mentor and close friend. All very moving!
My favourite Ted Hughes poem has to be Full Moon and Little Frieda
A cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark and the clank of a bucket –
And you listening.
A spider's web, tense for the dew's touch.
A pail lifted, still and brimming – mirror
To tempt a first star to a tremor.
Cows are going home in the lane there, looping the hedges with their warm
wreaths of breath –
A dark river of blood, many boulders,
Balancing unspilled milk.
'Moon!' you cry suddenly, 'Moon! Moon!'
The moon has stepped back like an artist gazing amazed at a work
That points at him amazed.
You can find out more information by reading the official press release from Westminster Abbey.
Jenny Tighe
Marketing Executive