Little Missenden Festival 2008
A
Little Missenden Festival 2007
Event 13 2008
Ted Hughes: writing for children
Nick Gammage
Saturday October 18th, 5.00pm
Little Missenden village hall
Tickets adults £6, unreserved
40 years ago the Festival commissioned Ted Hughes to write five harvest festival songs for children from Little Missenden School, later published in an anthology called Season Songs – widely regarded as containing some of his finest poems about the natural world. Ted Hughes wrote that “Season Songs began as children's poems, but they grew up”.
Hughes had an almost holy regard for the purity, excitement and creative power of a child's imagination – both in their writing and in their love of words. Some of his finest poetry was for and about children. Teachers still use his classic book about how to encourage schoolchildren to write creatively, Poetry in the Making.
Nick Gammage will explore Hughes's fascination with the child's imagination; how this inspired some of his finest poetry; and how what he wrote for children fits with his other work. Nick will read and discuss some of the poems, drawing on Hughes’s writings and letters.
Nick’s readings and discussion promise real insights. This should appeal not only
to adults, but also to young people aged 10-
Nick Gammage’s friendship with Ted Hughes began when the latter encouraged Nick’s own poetic writing as a teenager, and it lasted for 20 years.
Nick has written widely about Hughes's poetry. Shortly after the poet’s death he edited The Epic Poise: A Celebration of Ted Hughes (Faber, 1998), containing tributes to Hughes, meditations on individual poems and new poems for Hughes. Contributors included Seamus Heaney, Andrew Motion, Roger McGough and Marina Warner.
Ted Hughes Corner, Mytholmroyd
Ted Hughes page on The Poetry Archive
Little Missenden Festival 2008
