Rocks and guts and bullocks

Ted Hughes was the first living poet I loved. The same is probably true for countless kids who went to school in the 1960s and 70s. The general rule that classroom study engenders a lifelong dislike of poetry must make an exception of Hughes. Only a teacher of chart-topping ineptitude could prevent a child from enjoying those magical early portraits of animals. I still remember the sensational shudder that ran through me at the opening of ‘The Jaguar’: ‘The apes yawn and adore their fleas in the sun.’

It was ‘adore’ that got me. Pluck or pick or squash or sift, yes, I was ready for those, but ‘adore’. It didn’t belong but it belonged. For me it was like the moment when the lozenge cracks and honey floods your tongue. Poetry could be physical.

Hughes’s talent was copious but only when deployed within a very narrow wave-band. Nature was his element.