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SUMMARY:Poetic electrons: Ted Hughes and the mayfly - Mark Wormald (Pembro
 ke College)
DTSTART:20170508T120000Z
DTEND:20170508T130000Z
UID:TALK72291@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Edwin Rose
DESCRIPTION:In 1981\, the artist Leonard Baskin wrote to the poet Ted Hugh
 es with a list of fifteen projected poems about insects that would feature
  in their next collaboration. It began with 'The Mayfly'. A poem with that
  title appeared in _London Magazine_ in 1983\, but was never collected. Th
 e central poem in _Flowers and Insects_ (1986) which Baskin illustrated\, 
 'Saint's Island'\, incorporates several phrases and insights first used in
  'The Mayfly'. And in 1993 Hughes published 'The Mayfly is Frail'\, in a r
 evised text of his collection _River_ (first published in 1983).\n\nThis p
 aper describes Hughes's education in the mayfly. Like its subject\, it had
  a long and hidden larval stage\, but took memorable flight in a fishing t
 rip to Ireland in May 1982\, which ended at Saint's Island on Lough Ree. T
 wo remarkable prose accounts of this trip are among Hughes' papers in the 
 British Library. Between them they shape a visionary narrative\, beginning
  with an Oxford tutorial in entomology from his son Nicholas\, and detaili
 ng Hughes's attempts\, in the company of a group of fanatical Irish fisher
 men\, to catch lough trout on imitations of its dun\, or Green Drake\, and
  spinner\, or Spent. The poetry that emerged from this experience is faith
 ful to these circumstances but also transcends them\, offering a powerful 
 vision of ecological interconnection not just to lovers of poetry but to a
 ll those concerned for the health of our rivers and lakes.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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