Il poeta laureato
Emory acquires the papers of England’s poet laureate
Among the literary papers of Ted Hughes, England’s poet laureate since 1984, is a 1968 letter from artist Leonard Baskin. The typed note recalls the moment “in that little coffeehouse on Upper Brook Street” when Baskin proposed the two collaborate on a sequence of poems and illustrations–a project that resulted in Crow, one of Hughes’ most acclaimed works. The fragile sheet is singed around the edges due to a fire in the poet’s home in 1970.
That damaged letter recently found a safe haven in the Department of Special Collections of the Robert W. Woodruff Library. Emory’s March 1997 acquisition of the Hughes archive–five thousand pounds of manuscripts, correspondence, photographs, and other materials–was in part a rescue operation.
For many years, some modern poetry scholars feared that the items now in the Woodruff Library would be lost or destroyed. A number of documents in the collection were blackened in the 1970 blaze, and many others have deteriorated from improper storage. Moreover, other scholars had expressed the concern that Hughes might try to suppress material concerning his troubled relationship with American poet and novelist Sylvia Plath.
“This acquisition should put many of those fears to rest,” says Emory literary collections curator Steve Enniss of the eighty-six boxes that until last March filled an upstairs room in Hughes’ home in Devon, England. “There is early material [reflecting Plath's role] here. It was at risk, but I think Ted realized this is a part of literary history that needs to be preserved. Study of his work is now possible in a way that was not possible before.”
Hughes is known for his vivid, often violent poems about the natural world. In early works such as his 1960 volume, Lupercal, his experiments with savage vocabulary and jarring rhythms drew critical attention in England and the United States.
“His contribution to English poetry has been powerful and immensely influential . . . ,” says University President William M. Chace, a scholar of modern literature. “He has been among those who have made English poetic statement more forceful, immediate, visceral, and disturbing. In addition, his affinity with some of the leading poets of Northern Ireland makes the arrival of his papers at Emory particularly appropriate, for our collection has thus gained greater coherence and depth.”
Emory’s Department of Special Collections, which holds some eight hundred collections of personal papers and organizational archives, is recognized for its extensive modern literature archives. The University’s holdings have long included the papers of Irish writers William Butler Yeats, Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, Thomas Kinsella, and Michael Longley, among others. Because of Hughes’ correspondence and collaboration with several of these writers, the addition of his papers strengthens the library’s collection.
A native of West Yorkshire, England, Hughes began writing poetry as a student in Pembroke College, Cambridge. He met and married Plath in 1956. Over the next several years, he began receiving prizes for his work, including the Guinness Poetry Award in 1958 and the Somerset Maugham Award in 1960. He and Plath separated in 1963, and she committed suicide soon after. Following her death, Hughes helped bring much of her unpublished work into print while his own career continued to flourish. This year, he and Heaney, a 1995 Nobel Laureate, co-edited The School-Bag, a collection of poetry for children.
Dating from the 1950s to the present, Hughes’ papers are expected to shed new light on his life and work, including his relationship with Plath. For instance, the collection contains an unpublished, typed manuscript page from Plath’s novel, The Bell Jar, scratched through in blue pencil, ripped into three pieces, then restored with tape. On the back is a hand-written poem by Hughes.
Enniss expects the process of organizing and cataloguing the collection to take up to two years. One of his tasks will be to restore a tattered, brittle scrapbook in which Plath documented Hughes’ career during the late 1950s and early ’60s. Peeling from its pages are clippings of published poems, a note from 1948 Nobel Laureate T.S. Eliot, and letters and telegrams from editors at the Nation, the Partisan Review, and Harper and Row.
“Sylvia took tremendous pride in his career,” observes Enniss. “There was a close relationship in those years, creative as well as personal.”
Also in the archive are original manuscripts of almost all of Hughes’ work to date, including unpublished writings. He scribbled lines on envelopes, paper sacks, even newspaper wrappers. There is also vast correspondence with other artists and writers.
“His papers will be of enormous teaching and scholarly use,” adds Professor of English Ronald Schuchard, who has taught Hughes’ work since 1970. “Because of his editing and correspondence with other poets, he’s really an international poet laureate. His outreach is international, and his papers here will draw scholars from around the world.”–A.O.A.
