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Ted Hughes: From Cambridge to "Collected"
An International Conference at Pembroke College, Cambridge
 15-18 September 2010
Plenary Speakers: Seamus Heaney and Jonathan Bate
Other speakers: Keith Sagar, Ann Skea, Neil Roberts, Terry Gifford, Stephen Enniss, Neil Corcoran, Joanny Moulin, Jo Gill, Usha V.T., Chen Hong, Paul Bentley, Stuart Hirschberg.
Ted Hughes went up to Pembroke College to read English in 1951, at the age of twenty-one. He won an Exhibition (a minor scholarship) which marked him as a specially promising student, and he was successful, gaining an Upper Second in Part One at the end of his second year. (Firsts in the Arts were much less common then than now.) Nevertheless, he later said that he regarded Cambridge as ‘enemy country’. He felt alienated as a working-class student from Yorkshire (even though a third of Pembroke students in his year were from grammar schools) and more significantly he was hostile to the academic study of literature, which he felt stifled his creativity and prevented him from writing poetry. It was at Pembroke that he had his famous dream of a burnt fox that told him to stop writing critical essays because ‘it is destroying us’. In his third year he changed to Archaeology and Anthropology, in which he got a Third in Part Two—but he didn’t regret his decision. He published only two poems when he was a student, both under pseudonyms, and in the final month of his time there, although he considered neither of them worth reprinting in book form.
 However, Cambridge was a deeply formative experience for Hughes. His anthropological studies were the foundation for his creative exploration of myth and religion; and it was there that he made some his most important and enduring friendships, with people such as Daniel Weissbort, Peter Redgrove, Daniel Huws, Terence McGaughey, David Ross and Lucas Myers. And it was of course at Cambridge, though after his graduation, that he met Sylvia Plath.
Cambridge is therefore an intriguing and resonant place at which to contemplate Hughes’s career, and to hold the latest in a series of international conferences, following Manchester (1980 and 1990), Lyon (2000), Atlanta (2005) and Edinburgh (2005). Over this period his reputation has sunk and risen again, and has never been higher than it is now. This is a time when his work offers a focus for a wide range of explorations in terms of themes, genres and contexts.
Papers have been invited on any topic related to Hughes’s work. We suggested the following as guidelines and possible focuses for panels:
- Hughes and Cambridge
- Hughes and the Environment
- Hughes and Religion
- Hughes and the Canon
- Hughes and Contemporary Poetry
- Hughes the Playwright
- Hughes's Current Influence
- Hughes as Writer for Children
- Hughes and Feminism
- Hughes and Plath
- Hughes as Translator
- Hughes and Esoteric Knowledge
- Recurring Images in the Work of Hughes
- Hughes's Shakespeare
- Hughes's Essays and Letters
- Hughes as Laureate
- The Hughes Archives
 Please note that the deadline for submitting an outline for a paper has now passed; no further submissions can be accepted. The conference will accommodate some 30 papers, from a range of established and younger scholars. We also look forward to welcoming delegates who do not intend to present a paper.
Conference Registration Fees will be £125 for established scholars and £95 for post-graduate students and those without access to institutional support. Registration forms confirming these rates and booking details for accommodation in College at highly competitive rates will be available here shortly.
The Elmet Trust is offering an optional tour of the Calder Valley for conference members from 18 - 20 September 2010. Further details are available here.
Information and resources on Ted Hughes:
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