An episode from 5/8/24: Tonight, I read fourteen poems from Ted Hughes’s 1970 collection, Crow. His books Crow, Moortown Diary, Remains of Elmet, and River contain his best poetry, and they are models for any artist in how handle nature, animal life, myth, and autobiography in their work. The poems that read are:
- A Childish Prank (the audio of Hughes reading the poem comes from here)
- Crow’s First Lesson
- Crow Tyrannosaurus
- Crow & the Birds
- Crowego
- Crow Blacker than Ever
- Crow’s Last Stand
- Crow & the Sea
- Fragments of an Ancient Tablet
- Notes for a Little Play
- Lovesong
- Littleblood
- Crow’s Courtship
- Crow’s Song about God
This is a revision and complete re-recording of an episode first posted in August of 2021, which included fewer poems. I’ve used the opportunity to also read from Jonathan Bates’s biography of Hughes, Hughes’s later notes to the book, as well as handful of letters he wrote about the collection.
You can support Human Voices Wake Us here, or by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I’ve also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series.
Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
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