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A short class with Sarah and her students. The other ways are under More.
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Where did Ted Hughes grow up?
In Mytholmroyd in the Calder Valley, then in Mexborough in South Yorkshire.
Who introduced him to hunting and fishing?
His older brother Gerald, who took him on expeditions over the moors.
How does that show in his poetry?
He describes animals with real precision, like someone who has watched them for hours.
Exactly. His animals are observed, not imagined from books.
What did Hughes study at Cambridge?
English at first, then archaeology and anthropology.
Why does that matter for his poetry?
Anthropology is about myths and early beliefs. His animals often feel ancient and mythical.
Which collection contains Pike?
Lupercal, from 1960. It won the Hawthornden Prize and also has Hawk Roosting.
Good. And his first book?
The Hawk in the Rain, 1957, judged a winner by Auden, Spender and Marianne Moore.
How is Hughes's nature different from, say, a poem about daffodils?
It is violent and powerful. His animals are killers and survivors, not pretty decorations.
What else fascinated him?
What lies beneath the surface, in water, in the earth and in the mind.
How does that connect with Pike?
The poem ends with him fishing at night, terrified of what might rise from the depths.
born in Mytholmroyd in 1930 and raised in Mexborough, Hughes grew up hunting, fishing and exploring.
national service in the RAF, then Cambridge, where he switched from English to archaeology and anthropology.
The Hawk in the Rain (1957) and Lupercal (1960), which contains "Pike" and won the Hawthornden Prize.
Crow, The Iron Man, River, Tales from Ovid and Birthday Letters; Poet Laureate from 1984 to 1998.
animals as embodiments of instinct, energy and violence, observed precisely and charged with mythic power.
an angler's exact observation combined with awe at ancient forces beneath the surface.
Linking biography to a poem: Hughes's boyhood fishing in the ponds around Mexborough helps explain the exact, first-hand detail of the pike's markings and stillness in "Pike".
Linking education to style: his study of anthropology at Cambridge encouraged the sense, strong in "Pike", that the natural world holds ancient, almost mythical powers.
Placing a poem in a career: "Pike" belongs to Lupercal (1960), the collection that confirmed the reputation Hughes had won with The Hawk in the Rain (1957).
Describing his vision: unlike gentle, decorative nature poetry, Hughes's work presents animals as perfectly designed survivors and predators, as the pike are.
Born in the valley in nineteen-thirty, fishing the ponds where the water ran dirty; Cambridge and myths, then the Hawk and the Pike; Laureate later, and wild things alike.
A small boy follows his big brother over the moors at dawn, carrying a fishing rod taller than himself. Years later, as Poet Laureate, he still remembers the stillness of a pond at night and the feeling that something ancient was watching him from below.
My Mother Can Help Lift Large Books stands for Mytholmroyd, Mexborough, Cambridge, Hawk in the Rain, Lupercal, Laureate, Birthday Letters.
H.U.G.H.E.S. - Hunting and fishing boyhood, University anthropology, Gerald his brother, Hawk in the Rain and Lupercal, Energy and violence in nature, Served as Laureate
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When and where was Ted Hughes born?
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Who took Hughes hunting and fishing as a boy?
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What did Hughes study at Cambridge?
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In which collection does "Pike" appear?
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When was Hughes Poet Laureate?
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What is distinctive about Hughes's view of nature?
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A steep-sided valley in West Yorkshire, Hughes's birthplace region, of mill towns and moorland.
Compulsory military service for young men in Britain after the Second World War.
The study of human societies and cultures, including myths and rituals.
Hughes's second collection (1960), which contains "Pike" and won the Hawthornden Prize.
A poet appointed by the monarch to write for national occasions; Hughes held the post from 1984 to 1998.
A rare British honour for distinguished achievement, given to Hughes shortly before his death.
Belonging to the earliest, most basic level of existence; often used of the instincts in Hughes's animals.
This lesson introduces Ted Hughes (1930–1998) as the poet of "Pike": his Yorkshire childhood of fishing and exploring, his education and early success, his major collections, his years as Poet Laureate, and the fierce, unsentimental vision of nature that runs through his work.
Ted Hughes grew up in the West Riding of Yorkshire, first in the Calder Valley town of Mytholmroyd and then in Mexborough, where he spent his boyhood fishing ponds, roaming farmland and catching animals, often with his elder brother Gerald. After national service in the RAF he studied at Pembroke College, Cambridge, switching from English to archaeology and anthropology, subjects that later fed his interest in myth. In 1956 he married the American poet Sylvia Plath, and his first collection, The Hawk in the Rain (1957), won a competition judged by W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Marianne Moore. "Pike" appeared in his second book, Lupercal (1960). Hughes went on to write Crow, books for children such as The Iron Man, and Birthday Letters, and served as Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death in 1998. This lesson traces his life and shows how his experience as an angler and his view of nature as powerful, ancient and violent shape "Pike".
Edward James Hughes was born on 17 August 1930 in Mytholmroyd, a mill town in the Calder Valley in the West Riding of Yorkshire, surrounded by steep moorland. He was the youngest of three children; his sister Olwyn was two years older and his brother Gerald ten years older. Gerald took the young Ted on long expeditions over the moors, hunting and fishing, and this early immersion in wild country gave Hughes the close knowledge of animals that marks his poetry. Much later he returned to this landscape in Remains of Elmet (1979).
When Ted was about seven, the family moved to Mexborough in South Yorkshire, where his parents ran a newsagent's and tobacconist's shop. He explored Manor Farm at Old Denaby, with its fields, woods and water, and he fished and trapped with a boy's obsessive attention. At Mexborough Grammar School, teachers encouraged his writing and introduced him to poets such as Gerard Manley Hopkins and T. S. Eliot. Hughes later named Blake, Donne, Hopkins and Eliot among his main influences.
Hughes won a place at Pembroke College, Cambridge, but first did two years of national service in the RAF as a ground wireless mechanic at a remote station in East Yorkshire. At Cambridge from 1951 he began by reading English but, in his third year, transferred to archaeology and anthropology. These subjects, with their study of myths, rituals and early human beliefs, deeply influenced his later poetry.
In 1956 Hughes met the American poet Sylvia Plath, and they married on 16 June that year. Plath typed his manuscript and entered it for a competition in New York, judged by W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Marianne Moore, which it won. Published in 1957 as The Hawk in the Rain, it contained "The Thought Fox" and "The Jaguar". His second collection, Lupercal (1960), won the Hawthornden Prize and included "Pike", "Hawk Roosting" and "Thrushes". These animal poems established Hughes as a major new voice. Hughes and Plath moved to Court Green in Devon in 1961; their marriage broke down, and Plath died in 1963.
Hughes's later books include Wodwo (1967) and Crow (1970), a dark, mythic sequence that is often considered his most significant work. He wrote widely for children, including The Iron Man (1968), and his Poetry in the Making (1967) remains a classic guide for young writers. Farming in Devon inspired Moortown, and his lifelong passion for rivers and angling produced River (1983). He was appointed Poet Laureate in December 1984 and held the post until his death. His Tales from Ovid (1997) won the Whitbread Book of the Year, and Birthday Letters (1998) broke his long public silence about his life with Plath. Shortly before he died on 28 October 1998, he was appointed to the Order of Merit.
Hughes rejected the gentle, decorative nature poetry that many readers expected. His animals are embodiments of energy, instinct and violence: hawks, jaguars, foxes, crows and pike that live entirely by their nature, without human doubt or morality. His language is muscular and physical, full of strong verbs, hard consonants and startling images. He was fascinated by what lies beneath the surface, in the earth, in water and in the human mind, and by the survival of ancient, primitive forces inside the modern world. His interest in anthropology and myth gave his animals a symbolic weight, while his fieldcraft as a hunter and angler kept them precise and real.
"Pike" draws on everything above. Its exact descriptions of the fish's markings, jaws and stillness come from years of watching water as an angler. Its anecdotes, small pike kept in a glass tank and two dead pike found locked together on a bank, have the feel of a naturalist's notebook. Its final scene, fishing alone at night on an ancient pond in terror of what might rise, reflects Hughes's sense that nature holds powers older than human history, and his belief that such depths exist in the human mind too. Hughes came to see fishing as an almost religious experience; "Pike" shows why.