Ted Hughes BBC Radio Interview Clip from 1992

Ted Hughes on BBC Radio 4's 'Bookshelf' programme, March 20, 1992.
A ten minute fragment from an old cassette - worth sharing but excuse the quality.
The interviewer is Nigel Forde and Hughes reads two poems:
01:39 Dust As We Are, from 'Wolfwatching' (1989)
06:01 Widdop, from 'Remains Of Elmet' (1979)

[@jonharrison9222]

Moortown Diary is better than Birthday Letters.
There, I said it.

[@Bradford.C.Wallsbury]

Agreed!

[@jimnewcombe7584]

As is 'Lupercal', and 'Tales from Ovid'. Both of those books are, in my opinion, his best, and are better than and 'Crow' and 'Birthday Letters' - the latter of which is nothing when set beside the revenant poems of grief by Thomas Hardy.

[@michaelalpert5019]

Why are you making a simplistic and unexplained value judgement? Why not just say you like one book better than another, and leave it at that? An individual's response to a poem or book of poems is a personal matter. When it comes to poetry, "better" is a word that lacks depth, at least in the way it is being used here. Hughes's books differ in subject matter, voice, and approach. He was given a long, fruitful life as a writer. Let's stay open to his many themes and variations.

[@jimnewcombe7584]

@@michaelalpert5019 One point presumably is that people who bought or even read Birthday Letters did so less out of a love for poetry than a carrion devouring of sensationalised biography - most of the book was doggerel (but then they are called letters). The poems of Wendy Cope are not equal to those of Wallace Stevens, and I don't believe that is because of personal opinion, because my opinions don't matter when confronted with strong poetry. "Take but degree away, untune that string, and heark what discord follows..."

[@8angst8]

@@jimnewcombe7584 "Birthday Letters" is important in literary history not because of the quality of the poems but because of their response to his first wife, who committed suicide. The fact that he made this effort is important to many of us.