Ted Hughes, Poet, bloke, lad and fisherman - the unauthorised spin

Jack Nicholson as the Ted

 This Ted Hughes, he's a reet canny lad. He uses wurds like a canary pecks at seed. He went ta University! One of them posh ones like Noocastel University. Wye aye, he did. He decided he wanted to be a poet. Mind, I told me ma the same when I was a lad. Rather thun sendin' us ta Univarsity, she took me to the doctor. He gis us castor oil, an injection of boiled water like and pulled on me lug. Telling' us me spellin' were worse than a bairn with a fork up its jacksie.

But young Belgo Geordie did fancy hisself as a wurd smith (more packet of crisps - Smiths). And 50 years on I can see: -  Belgo Geordie is but a toe nail to the great poet that is Mr Hughes. So this Christmas break in-between work I sat meself down and read the unauthorised biography of Crow by Jonathan Bate to see what it were that makes a poet great and one of the Queens performing corgi's at that!
So master Hughes went to the grammar school. University scholarship, Drank, partied, got together with girls, broke up with girls, got together with girls when he hadn' broken up with girls, Got back together with girls he had broken up with to break up with them again, again, again and agin. Red of tooth 'n claw mitta been this lads motto and he was a poster boy for the testosterone driven male id. No accidentally waking up in a lad's bed in Cambridge for Mr Hughes and putting' it down in a few poems to experience.
Then there is the sex, liked it rough did Mr Hughes. More than the over written diatribe that Mr Hughes drove a superior writer (Sylvia Plath) to suicide is in my view the distasteful borderline of "consenting" sexual violence. In his poetry this emerges as the raw, amorality of the beast and is spun with mythology of the brutal life force giving us creativity and creation. Raw passion dripping destruction in its wake like. Slobber off the maw of a wild boar more like!
But, the man could write and Jonathan Bate does a good job in taking the reader through the

chronology and development of Ted Hughes the writer. And in this Mr Hughes excelled and in my view deserves his place in the dusty bards corner of Westminster Grabby. I confess I did read his polemic on Shakespeare "..and the completeness of getting your end off" or sum sooch bafflin' title. It took a lotta of time on nettie to finish off that one! Although not a fan of the 'mystic of nature ' view of life, I like it more than the collection of religious sky fairies, although they have a lot in common with the 'random cruelty is just life' philosophy.
I was also less enamoured by the transition of the working class boy of the left (1950s and sixties) to after exposure to a few fly fishin' expeditions with the queen mum and other hooray henries to becoming a fan of one Margaret Thatcher. Calling Queenie and her ilk conservationists had the kipper come alive and stick in me craw. Ter counteract this he was ever a supporter of new or forgotten poets, particularly bringing to the attention of the English writing world writers who were writing in other languages and were all too often at risk in their own countries for their work. A complex man of contradictions.

Of course clutching Mr Bate's magnus opus with one wrist and Mr Hughes's collected works of poesys in t'other were a test. Boot ya have to read it alongside to get more depth and context to individual poems. It were worth the wrists being bent to buggery at the end of the journey. In particular I enjoyed the "Birthday Letters". This was the man wearing the slings and the arrows of ill judged venom and quietly working out the sinews of a relationship which in life was more difficult to sustain. In these poems he wears his heart on his sleeve and it is a massive heart and gut wrenching howl of a man trapped in a cage of his own design. In the context of the time there was little unusual in Ted Hughes's relationship with Sylvia Plath (and the many women in which he was a turbulence run wild across their emotional compasses). But as Mr Bate's identifies, Mr Hughes never underestimated Ms Plath's writing, and throughout his writing life it was as much a star he used to guide his own considerable output. And like many men of letters (arts) who see sexual infidelity as revolutionary, Ted Hughes experienced the lacerations of the tragedies this caused him. As well as the suicide of Sylvia Plath, the carbon copy suicide of Assia Wevil with the deeply troubling murder of their daughter Shura. The drawn out deaths of former lovers, friends and family members. These, as Mr Bates shows, Ted Hughes faced full on and used as grist to write. And this heart blood is present in the poetry he wrote to make sense of the frequently insensible. And for me, as reader, it was the final tragedy that was more profound. After the death of Ted Hughes was the suicide of his son Nicholas; a possible reaction to the enormous hole created by his father's death.

Crow! Na, Currawong

Lastly, Mr Bate's did a good job of explaining the blasted landscape of Yorkshire which even though the adult Ted lived mostly in Somerset and London, formed the basis of his inner being. This and the farmer Ted and fishing Ted alongside his lifelong commitment to conservation. I did wonder whether Ted the Conservative ever thought carefully that his beloved Mrs T would have happily nuked the unfree world without a second thought to the consequences of Ted's rustic landscape being the acceptable collateral to such an act. See also the beautiful Fay Godwin photographs in "Remains of Elmet"-where the images are as instructive as the verse in capturing the inner Hughes. Likewise his intricate family relationships which fed and nurtured him throughout his life, even at their most dysfunctional. You have a sense this was his anchor and centre which let him manage the maelstrom of other relationships. Also the analysis of his poetic influences (have to appreciate a writer who so admired the craft and technique of Dylan Thomas). Rich fodder. So this were good reading and I took a lot out of the time getting to know Mr Hughes. In this Mr Bate's has done a grand job. Worth the hire of the crane to get it in the Christmas stocking.

Anyhow, time for the sensitive reader to look away. I have bin inspired to again wet the lead, sharpen me pencils and peer into blue yonder. Mr Hughes liked to translate the work of others. And in me own busting' with britches confidence Geordie way, I thought I would have a go an' decided ta translate a Ted Hughes poem (weell  a bit of un-he were never short of long words on the page) inta Geordie. Look mon, sum un had ta! So I chose one I allus liked "The Horses". This wor from a wee book he (TH) called "The Hawk in The Rain". Now this should be in Geordie "Wet Boord" but since He (TH) has popped yon clogs I thought "Summat or Nowt" summed up the literary opus of one Ted Hughes.

"The Horses" as by Ted Hughes

I climbed through woods in the hour before dawn dark
Evil air, a frost-making stillness,

not a leaf, not a bird -
A world cast in frost. I came out above the wood

Where my breath left tortuous statues in the iron light.
But the valleys were draining the darkness

Till the moraine - blackening dregs of the brightening grey -
Halved the sky ahead. And I saw the horses:

Huge in the dense grey - ten together -
Megalith still. They breathed, making no move,

With draped manes and tilted hind-hooves
Making no sounds.

I passed: not one snorted or jerked its head.
Grey silent fragments

Of a grey silent world.

(Afta this, you get the gist-he bangs on about playin with yon self on hillside-so I left him too it and got on with me translation:)

"Yon Neddies" a transliteration by Belgo Geordie of TH

Aa dragged me bum up back of beyont, too friggin early for any booger!
Me cousin Eric's fart fair hung about an' I didnay moove.

Not a tab, nor even a spuggy -
Frigid, me knackers rang like bells, when I came oot from oonda trees

Me breath hung heavy like fug at bottom of bird cage
A crack in sky told oos it were due to get light like

I had a migraine - the dregs of beer and spirit chasers -
Ahh could barely see boot then I fair kacked meeself:

In front of oos, big bloody pit ponies - ten of em lookin' at us -
Malevolent boogers. Trouble: breathin' thru dilated nostrils

With teddy boy quiffs, they sharpened their hooves
Whustlin "Blaydon Races", boot silently.

I pissed meself: An' they looked at me with utter disbelief
Red and white marrers

On red and white turf.
Like I'd strayed onto Roker Park in the dark -

An then the lights were switched on....
As one, the neddies turned an' ran.