Crow (recalling Ted Hughes); Carol Ann Duffy and Thomas Hardy

John Hubbard's talk in Bournemouth

An excellent lecture on Hardy and The Poetry of Unbelief by John Hubbard in Dorchester last night. I wonder what Hardy would have made of this song?

Tonight there's a reading by the Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, at Bridport Arts Centre, with music by John Sampson (Update: an excellent and entertaining evening. Carol Ann Duffy read poems old and new, including a number from The World's Wife (1999)- Mrs Midas, Mrs Tiresias, Mrs Faust and Mrs Darwin). I was hoping she would read Circe, which begins:

Fortunately, it was not dedicated to me!

The image of the crow on the beach (above) brought to mind another Poet Laureate's sequence of poems called CROW.

Some lines from three different Ted Hughes poems from that collection:

"Limpid and black-


Crow's eye-pupil, in the tower of its scorched fort."


"Crow had to start searching for something to eat."


"Crow spraddled head-down in the beach-garbage, guzzling a dropped ice-cream."