Making A Start

Generally I can recall with some accuracy my first encounters with writers and musicians who have become particular favourites. I know, for example, that I had never really read Dickens until after finishing studying Lit at university. In fact, I put off reading my first novel by the Inimitable until after I graduated, sensing that an 'academic' reading would blight the experience. I think I was right to do so. (It was Bleak House, and I found it astonishing.) Indeed, I remember that my subsequent love of Dickens added considerably to my scepticism concerning academia.

But the strange thing is that despite all my efforts I just cannot remember beginning to read Ted Hughes. It's as if I've always known his work, yet that is obviously not the case. I'm pretty sure that, as in the case of Dickens, I hadn't read any Hughes at all up to leaving university. Yet by my second year of teaching I'm sure I was already an addict. His little book based on his radio talks for children Poetry in the Making had become something of a holy book for me, and I can remember the deep impact of certain chapters, but I don't know if that came before reading the stuff more obviously for adults or before. I've got a feeling that Crow was my first encounter, yet I'm clueless as to how that stood in relation to the very early poems - so many of which were anthologised in books used in schools.

I'm guessing that I became acquainted with a lot of Hughes all at once and became 'expert' quickly enough to convince Tony of the value of the poet by the time of the publication of Remains of Elmet (in 1979.) It was Tony who bought the volume and, for some reason, I didn't. Probably because we sort of shared Hughes between us. He had my copy of Wodwo for ages, I do know.

None of this really matters, I suppose. The important thing was getting hooked. But it does seem odd to have forgotten how it all started.