TED HUGHES b. August 17, 1930

TED HUGHES 

August 17, 1930-October 28, 1998 

Poet Laureate of England 

1984-1998 

From the New York Times article (December 20, 1984) announcing his appointment as Poet Laureate: Ted Hughes was "the son of a Yorkshire carpenter," and "a former rose gardener and nightwatchman at the Rank film studios at Pinewood, England"; he "specializes in poems about animals and birds."  Indeed, it was the publication of a collection of his poems called Crow that occasioned my being sent to photograph him in 1971.  I must have been one of the few people who crossed his path who did not think of him first of all as someone's husband (or, more accurately, widower).