On Tuesday I attended the dedication of the memorial to Ted Hughes in Poet's Corner. Poems were read by Juliet Stevenson, Seamus Heaney and Daniel Huws (the Welsh writer who knew Hughes at Cambridge); there is a
Channel 4 news clip which gives a sense of the atmosphere there. The readings took place in front of Chaucer's tomb, which brought to mind that poem in
Birthday Letters where Hughes remembers Sylvia Plath declaiming Chaucer to a field of cows, who seemed enthralled, 'ears angling to catch every inflection.'. Perhaps it would have felt more apt to have heard Hughes's poems out in the landscape, but there in the Abbey, he was connected to a tradition of English poets that began with Cædmon, who found his voice whilst caring for the animals at the monastery of Streonæshalch. Seamus Heaney made a short speech in dedication, invoking the closing lines of
Beowolf where a memorial mound, high on a headland is built for the dead hero, 'far-famed and beloved'. The inscription on this new memorial comes from one of the poems in
River (1983), 'That Morning', in which Hughes recalled standing solemnly 'in the pollen light / Waist-deep in wild salmon.' It seemed a moment of blessing, as if the fish had let the world as it is pass away: 'there, in a mauve light of drifted lupins, / They hung in the cupped hands of mountains...'
That's quite something: were you invited, Plinius, or did you just turn up?
ReplyDeleteI still can't quite figure why, of all the words Hughes wrote, those particular ones -- divorced from context -- made it onto his memorial. I realise he was keen on such close encounters of the third kind, but...
Mike
It is certainly worth looking up the poem for the full context. I think the quotation works, but it is tricky to design a new stone for Poet's Corner - 'a jumble of floor memorials that scream at each other' according to an article in the Telegraph. I had an invitation, but not via the Hughes family.
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