Event

Ted Hughes Festival 2009

Date: 22 October 2009 – 25 October 2009

As the nights draw in, October will see The Ted Hughes Festival return. Last year we celebrated a week-long festival to commemorate the tenth anniversary of Ted Hughes' death.

This time we're cramming talks, walks and workshops into one long weekend. Some of the big names on their way to the Calder Valley will be Ursula Holden Gill, former actress on Eastenders and sit-com Teachers, lecturer and writer Keith Sagar, and poets John Hegley and Jackie Kay who will be announcing the winners of our popular poetry competitions.

To view our brochure and reserve your tickets, download our brochure and booking form here!

Thursday 22nd October

The Hughes Archives - The Erringden Room, 7.30pm

Helen Broderick is the cataloguer of the Hughes Archive at the British Library. The archive comprises over 220 files containing manuscripts, letters, journals, personal diaries. Helen has written a blog providing updates about the cataloguing of the collection, while also sharing information about any interesting or unexpected things found within it. Helen will talk about her experiences and share how this large and varied collection will enable researchers to gain a greater understanding of the life and work of Ted Hughes.

Tickets £5/£4 concessions

Friday 23rd October

Tea with Ted - St Michael's Church Hall, 4pm

Children from Scout Road, Burnley Road and Cragg Vale Schools read their favourite poems from Ted Hughes' collections for children. Tea and cakes available.

Donations on the door.

John Hegley - Ted Hughes Theatre, Mytholmroyd, 7pm

A joint event with the Calderdale Libraries, Museums and Arts. Includes the presentation of The Ted Hughes Young Poets' Awards.

John Hegley is widely known as one of the country's most innovative comic poets with several best-selling volumes of poetry to his name. John Hegley is a regular sell-out at The Edinburgh Festival. He has performed at the Montreal Comedy Festival, the USA Comedy Festival in Aspen, with Ulrika Jonsson & Anita Dobson in The Pyjama Game and on BBC R4's Hearing With Hegley. This year he has been the judge of the Ted Hughes Young Poets Award, and tonight he will award those prizes and talk about the competition, as well as reading from his own work.

Tickets £10/£8 concessions

Saturday 24th October

Storytime with Ursula Holden Gill - Mytholmroyd Library, 10am

A joint event with the Calderdale Libraries, Museums and Arts. Stories for young children with actress and storyteller Ursula Holden Gill.

Free admission

Junk Modelling Workshop with Mick Kirkby-Geddes - St Michael's Church Hall, 2-4pm

Mick Kirkby-Geddes is a sculptor who uses everyday objects and scrap metal to create his own personal style of work. He has a very keen eye for finding interesting forms within what most people would regard as junk. He then transforms these shapes into new and fascinating objects, which have included figures, animals, insects, clocks, gates, railings and flowers.

Tickets £2

Crimsworth Dean - A Walk with Donald Crossley, 2pm

A guided walk up the valley of Crimsworth Dean where Ted Hughes found inspiration for many poems, including 'Six Young Men'.

Start Time: 2.00pm

Meeting point: National Trust car park at Hardcastle Crags

Difficulty: Moderate

Length: 3-4 miles, approx 3 hours

Tickets £5/£4 concessions

Jackie Kay - Ted Hughes Theatre, Mytholmroyd, 7.30pm

A joint event with Calderdale Libraries, Museums and Arts. Includes the presentation of The Elmet Poetry Prize.

Jackie Kay was born and brought up in Scotland. Her most recent collection of short stories, ‘Wish I Was Here' won the Decibel British Book Award. She has won the Guardian Fiction Prize for her novel ‘Trumpet', and a Forward Prize for her collection of poetry ‘The Adoption Papers'. She is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Newcastle . Her most recent collection of poetry ‘Darling, New and Selected Poems' was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. She was awarded an MBE in 2006. This year she has been the judge of the Elmet Poetry Prize, and tonight she will award those prizes and talk about the competition, as well as reading from her own work.

Tickets £10/£8 concessions

Sunday 25th October

Words of Art - Alan O' Cain - Erringden Room, 6pm

Artist Alan O'Cain talks about writers who have inspired his paintings, including Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Philip Larkin and Robert Lowell. At the end of the talk he will present a painting he created during last year's festival - celebrating the legacy of Ted Hughes in Mytholmroyd - to The Elmet Trust. Alan has worked in official collaborations with the Royal Shakespeare Company and Glyndebourne Opera. In 2008 he was artist-in-residence in the former studio of Edvard Munch. He has developed a reputation for ideas-filled works, and for emotionally charged portraiture.

Keith Sagar - Ted Hughes, Fishing and Poetry - Erringden Room, 7pm

From childhood onwards, Hughes' driving obsessions were fishing and poetry. For many years it seemed that they were pulling in opposite, mutually exclusive directions; but in the early nineteen-eighties, in River, they finally worked together to produce his finest poems.

Keith Sagar is the author of 'The Art of Ted Hughes' (1978) and 'The Laughter of Foxes: A Study of Ted Hughes' (2000). He has just completed Ted Hughes and Nature: 'Terror and Exultation'.

Tickets £5/£4 concessions for either or both of the above events.

Poetry Slam and Music - Erringden Room, 8.30pm

Come and take part in one our popular poetry slams and listen to the music of local folk band Tenterhooks.