Remains of Elmet

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Once analysis of the finds has taken place, it is hoped the lead coffin can be displayed in an upcoming exhibition at Leeds City Museum .

The publication history of Remains of Elmetappears to reflect the tumultuous nature of the landscape and the people it depicts. The second published revision of Remains of Elmetappears as one of the Three Books of Hughes 1993 'collection.' Here, old poems are given new titles, uncollected poems find themselves collected, and some old poems find they are omitted. The most striking omission is of the photographs. These are restored in the final version of this sequence published as Elmetin 1994. The poetry of Elmetfollows the model of the Three Booksversion whilst also including poems originally published in collections as early as The Hawk in the Rainand as late as Wolfwatchingand with additional photographs not seen in Remains of Elmet. Here word and deed seem to conflict. Hughes writes to Godwin of how indispensible the photographs are to the poems ( Letters, 420-1) and yet the subsequent revisions of the sequence marry different photographs with different poems, or omit certain poems and certain photographs altogether. It is likely that the cost of publication and matters of space were partly responsible for the omission of the photographs in Three Books, but the change of photographs in Elmetindicates a shift in perspective in the intervening years since the publication of Remains of Elmet. Gone is that prefix, ‘remains’, signalling that Hughes’s last re-working of the poems offers something more complete; the inclusion of poems from volumes of Hughes’s poetry outside of his Pennine sequences also indicate that to a degree Elmetis more of an anthology, a sequence of poetry collecting those verses which have the Calder Valley as their locus in some way. The area to the western Calder Valley side of Elmet is the subject of a 1979 book combining photography and poetry, the Remains of Elmet by Ted Hughes and Fay Godwin. [16] [17] The book was republished by Faber and Faber in 1994 as Elmet, with a third of the book being new poems and photographs. [ citation needed] ROE.23); and the Blake poem which this echoes might well serve to summarise Hughes’ healing purpose in this sequence: Hear the voice of the Bard!Ted Hughes is a poet whose work, although I dislike him from the outset as any self-respecting Sylvia Plath fan does, I have tried to read some of, and simply haven't enjoyed. Nevertheless I thought I would give him another go and read a full collection of his poetry, here presented stunningly with photos of areas described by Fay Godwin. Godwin appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs programme in 2002. Here’s what she chose as her eight favourite pieces of music. Godwin has long been associated with clunking medium-format cameras and leggy tripods. She refuses to endorse any particular system (although I know full well she was a fan of a certain Swedish manufacturer). But in conversation she lets it slip that she has recently bought a Minolta DiMage digital compact and has become hooked on her new-found medium. The people of Elmet survived as a distinctly recognized Brittonic Celtic group for centuries afterwards in what later became the smaller area of the West Riding of Yorkshire then West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire and North Derbyshire. [1] Geography [ edit ]

Go fishing / Join water, wade in underbeing” ( R.42) he writes in River, where his entry and return from the elemental other–world has become most accomplished but no less fraught with danger. The waters he fishes hide terrifying monsters, “ Killers from the egg” (‘Pike’); he is “ hunted / and haunted by apparitions from tombs” (‘Earth–Numb’ ( THCP.541); and the river itself is “ Alive and malevolent” (‘Stealing Trout on a May Morning’ ( THCP.137)), roping his ankles like “ a drowned woman” and rushing “ headlong” past him like a routed army, “ Mixed with planets, electrical storms and darkness” which tear “ the spirits from my mind’s edge and from under”. At times, too, the river is “ evil”, a “ grave” where “ The strange evil / Of unknown fish–minds” lies in wait for him ( R.76;62). These fish which lurk beneath the “ smoothing tons of dead element” are one with it, so that when one bites “ the river grabs at me … stiffens alive ... the whole river hauls” and the struggle between Man and fish becomes a struggle with the elements: Something terrified and terrifyingThe lark is not a common bird in myth or folklore, but it is worth noting that Shakespeare and Blake also made similar symbolic use of this bird. The lark, in Cymbeline, sings “ at heaven’s gate” (‘Song’.2:3); and, for Blake, the lark was “ a mighty Angel” (Mil.40:12) which mounts to “ a Crystal Gate … the entrance of the First Heaven” (Mil.39:61–2). Kathleen Raine writes that Blake used the lark as a symbol for the “ dimensionless point where eternity flows into time” (Raine.159), a symbolism which is particularly apt for Hughes’ poem. But after dispensing with a few choice words on humble journos (for not turning up to see her latest exhibition of digital work), she relents a little, and explains what’s kept her away from the hills these last few years. There were also times when I thought Hughes' writing was genuinely just bad. When I read the title of the poem Emily Brontë, I felt like I had just taken a huge run up and was about to launch into a fantastic poem about one of my heroes, from Yorkshire, in a collection about Yorkshire, by a renowned Yorkshire-born poet. And then the first stanza goes: