News
Ted Hughes Festival 2008 - Fanfare to the Local Laureate
In between, the novelist and writer Glyn Hughes, with special permission from the Ted Hughes estate, read from the Elmet poems and letters of his namesake.
Glyn Hughes said before the concert: "Ted Hughes has been ignored in Calderdale for too long. The Elmet Trust and this festival that they have organised have changed that."
The chair of The Elmet Trust, Sheila McAnulty, said that the festival was "the biggest thing that ever happened to Mytholmroyd". But if a poet has been largely ignored in his own country until now, there were two members of the audience representing the worldwide significance of the former poet laureate.
Italian student, Anita Scopano from Naples, who is writing a thesis about Ted Hughes, had come to Mytholmroyd for the final four days of the festival. "He touches chords inside me, especially with his love of nature," she said.
Dr Marina Tsvetkova, Professor of Linguistics at the university of Nizhniy Novgorod in Central Russia, had attended all 30 events at the festival. She had come to England for three weeks on a bursary to study Hughes.
She has been reading his work (in English - he is not yet translated into Russian) for many years, and said: "It has been my dream to come to Yorkshire and see for myself the area that inspired him. I have loved every event at the festival, but most of all the readings by Andrew Motion."
Hughes' widow, Carol, who visited Mytholmroyd on Sunday to watch the play, Dreaming of Foxes, about Ted's childhood, sent a message to the organisers, thanking them for the "rich and varied programme in celebration of Ted's life and work."
"It is the volunteers who made this festival happen who have played such an essential part," she said.
Sheila McAnulty said she hoped that the festival would become an annual event, and invited supporters to the annual meeting of the Elmet Trust on December 16.