Literary Birthday – 17 August – Ted Hughes

Ted Hughes was born 17 August 1930, and died 28 October 1998.

Five Quotes

1. The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn’t live boldly enough, that they didn’t invest enough heart, didn’t love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.
2. What happens in the heart simply happens.
3. What’s writing really about? It’s about trying to take fuller possession of the reality of your life.
4. Applause is the beginning of abuse.
5. …imagine what you are writing about. See it and live it. Do not think it up laboriously, as if you were working out mental arithmetic. Just look at it, touch it, smell it, listen to it, turn yourself into it. When you do this, the words look after themselves, like magic.

Ted Hughes was an English poet and children’s writer. He was British Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death. Hughes was married to American poet, Sylvia Plath, from 1956 until her suicide in 1963. Birthday Letters are a series of poems written to her. In 2008 The Times ranked Hughes fourth on their list of ‘The 50 greatest British writers since 1945’.

 by Amanda Patterson

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