Ted Hughes: The Importance of Fostering Creative Writing as Environmental Education
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Ted Hughes: The Importance of Fostering Creative Writing as Environmental Education Lorraine Kerslake1 Accepted: 18 September 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Ted Hughes is one of the most important poets in English literature of the last century and his huge volume of work (including his poetry, prose, plays, translations, letters and critical essays) has received a great deal of critical attention. Hughes was, of course, much more than just a writer. Throughout his life he was deeply engaged with environmental and ecological issues, and his own sense of environmental responsibility can be seen through his local call to action. That Hughes’s work touches on political and ethical concerns related to environmental issues has been well documented by critics such as Scigaj (1991), Gifford (1995), Sagar (2005), and more recently Reddick (2017). However, the link between these concerns and the importance that Hughes attached, throughout his working life, to engaging with children’s environmental imaginations, and the depth of his educational achievements for children, have received little attention to date. This article explores Hughes’ educational achievements and his ongoing involvement in a number of projects related to helping young children to write poetry, together with his work as a children’s poetry judge, which began in the 1960s, and his role in establishing the Arvon Foundation. It also looks at his commitment to educational projects such as Farms for City Children and his founding of the Sacred Earth Drama Trust, in the 1990s. These projects exemplify the relationship between his life-long commitment to local Lorraine Kerslake holds a PhD in children’s literature and ecocriticism and teaches at Alicante University, Spain. She has worked as a translator of literary criticism, poetry and art and published widely on children’s literature and ecocriticism. Her current research areas of interest include children’s literature, the representation of animals and nature in literature and art, ecocriticism and ecofeminism. She has been an active member of the Spanish research group on ecocriticism, GIECO, since 2010 and is also a member of the Research Institute for Gender Studies at Alicante University. She has participated in different research projects including “Stories for Change” (http:// ecohumanidades.webs.upv.es/relatos-para-el-cambio/) and the research group of mythcriticism Aglaya (http://acisgalatea.com/) and is currently a member of the research project ATLAS (American Travel Literature about Spain). Since 2016 she has been managing editor of the journal of ecocriticism Ecozon@ (European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment): http://www. ecozona.eu/. Her most recent publications include The Voice of Nature in Ted Hughes’s Writing for Children (Routledge, 2018) and “Hughes’s Collaboration with Artists” in Gifford, Terry (ed) Ted Hughes in Context (Cambridge, 2018). Extended author information available on the last page of the article
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Children’s Literatur
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