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).
