Ted Hughes Environmentalist and Ecopoet [Hardcover]

This book is the first book devoted entirely to Hughes as an environmental activist and writer. Drawing on the rapidly-growing interest in poetry and the environment, the book deploys insights from ecopoetics, ecocriticism and Anthropocene studies to analyse how Hughess poetry reflects his environmental awareness. Hughess understanding of environmental issues is placed within the context of twentieth-century developments in green ideology and politics, challenging earlier scholars who have seen his work as apolitical. The unique strengths of this book lie in its combination of cutting-edge insights on ecocriticism with extensive work on the British Librarys new Ted Hughes archive. It will appeal to readers who enjoy Hughess work, as well as students and academics.
1. Hughes and Ecopoetry.- 2. From Mytholmroyd to Mexborough: Origins of Hughes's Environmental Awareness.- 3. 'Long live the weeds and the wilderness': 'Green' Literary Influences.- 4. Animal Agency, America and Early Environmental Views.- 5. The Environmental Revolution.- 6. Hughes's Farming.- 7. 'Join Water'.- 8. Green Laureate.- 9. Global Environments.- 10. Hunting, Shooting, Fishing - And Conservation?.- Index.

Yvonne Reddick is Research Fellow in Modern English and World Literatures at University of Central Lancashire, UK, and she has previously held a research fellowship at the University of Warwick. She is a poet and scholar of literature and the environment. She won the Mslexia Poetry Pamphlet Competition and a Northern Writers Award in 2016, and her pamphlet Translating Mountains is now available.

Reveals Hughes to be not only an ecopoet, but a writer of environmental prose, a green activist, and a promoter of environmental education