Moortown Diary

by Ted Hughes

Originally published in 1979, Moortown Diary is the updated version of Ted Hughes's acclaimed Devon farming sequence, written over a period of several years during which he was spending almost every day outside, either gardening or farming. The introduction and notes (added in 1989) sketch in the background from which these remarkable poems emerged as an improvised verse journal, sparely edited, coalescing spontaneously on the page. 'Moortown Diary keeps its eye firmly on the creatures behind the language. It's written in the style of Hughes's play very swift and bright and urgent and speakable...Hughes strips away the protective layers - the soundproofed ears, the double-glazed eyes - that prevent us making contact with anything outside ourselves. Right now, I can't think of anything more important than that kind of poem. Because we're not just here to think about literature. We're here to try to wake up.' Alice Oswald, The Guardian'It grips your heart, and your intestines, like a vice from the first page. He makes language as physical as a bruise, and in these poems beauty and tenderness blend with violence.' John Carey, Sunday Times'The Moortown sequence includes some of Hughes's finest poems...They are like no other poems I have read, with a degree of intensity, sanity and grace that he has never equalled.' Anthony Thwaite, Times Literary Supplement

Genres: Poetry

92 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 31, 1989

About the author

Edward James Hughes was an English poet, translator, and children's writer. Critics frequently rank him as one of the best poets of his generation and one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1984 and held the office until his death. In 2008, The Times ranked Hughes fourth on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
He married fellow poet Sylvia Plath in 1956, and they lived together in the United States and then in England, in a tumultuous relationship. They had two children before separating in 1962 and Plath ended her own life in 1963.

Reviews

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't think putting Ted Hughes back in touch with real animals in a real place was the worst thing for his career. No mythological screening here. The 'ordinary' business of farming, as revealed in these poems, is not for the squeamish or prissy. The collection as a whole put a charge back into Hughes' writing that had been largely absent from the 70s onwards. 'Dehorning' and 'February 17th' are enduring favourites.

[Octavia Cade · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a series of farming poems written by Hughes during the time when he had a small farm in Devon. They are most of them pretty grim. As Hughes says himself, in one of the notes at the back, "The bulk of these pieces, I'm aware, concern the nursing if not the emergency hospital side of animal husbandry. All sheep, lambs, and calves are patients: something in them all is making a steady effort to die." A lot of those deaths are chronicled here, and it seems as if Hughes's farming life consists of wading through a sea of mud, shit, blood, and birthing fluids, all while remaining as unsentimental as possible. There's a few times my vegetarian self actually winced at some of the images - this is one of those collections that I admire rather than like, if that makes sense. There was, however, one poem that I did like very much, and which is actually my favourite Hughes poem thus far. "Sheep, Part I" is excellent. Yes, it's about death: a premature lamb that seems to have no interest in life and subsequently dies, but it's beautifully written and strangely appealing.

Now, having binged three collections from Hughes in the past week or so, I'm off him for a while. Time for a change, I think.

[Billy O'Callaghan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even though I write fiction, a lot of what I choose to read is poetry, because I find that it really heightens my awareness of language. The poetry of Ted Hughes just touches me right and I always keep one or another of his collections near to hand.
Particular favourites of mine include 'Crow' and 'River', and I have a certain fondness for 'Gaudete', but 'Moortown Diary' is probably the collection that I'd select if I were ever limited to just one. His imagery in this book, while at times quite brutal, feels utterly honest to me, and very often note-perfect ("Starlings/A dirtier, sleetier snow, blow smokingly, unendingly, over / Toward plantations eastward." - from 'Tractor'), and the poems themselves seem to breathe as you read them.
No writer I can think of (at least not in the last fifty years) has written better about weather and land and the violent aspects of nature.

[Phoebe Meikle · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25

[CuriousBookReviewer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Curiosity level: Shocking poetry

Ted Hughes is all guts and glory! He wastes no words for niceties in his poetry, and cuts straight to the point without apology !

Vivid, brutal and real, he writes about daily life on the farm (death of calves, goats mating, bulls and ravens). And if, like me, you looked at the cover and thought that this book is all farmy and fuzzy, you're sorely mistaken !

In "Dehorning", Hughes describes the dehorning of a bull: "... and a water-pistol jet of blood... and purple antiseptic squirts a cuttlefish cloud over it... the floor is a trampled puddle of scarlet... we collect a heap of horns. The purple crowned cattle..."

How's that for farm life ?

What I didn't like about it: the poems became too repetitive themewise despite their vivacity in descriptions. I guess farm life can be pretty rut like...?

Standalone poems would fare much better than in a collection (too many similar poems to stomach in one shot!)

[Colin Cloutus · Rating 5 out of 5]

O' intimate, disturbing reality.
Ted Hughes gave to the world a free verse diary of pages of un-doctored, un-romanticised words; produced here is a poetry of the moment, amidst the spark of relentless, brilliant, human experience—kept as far as possible from the double vision of reflection and the poetic voice.
With improvised imagery and spontaneous references as the words flow—Hughes shows some of his best work. While it is not conceptually diverse, the language, and the poignancy of the events in their simplicity, carries this anthology.
The addition of some lengthy notes and an introduction were perfect.
The poems acting as memory tributes to Jack Orchard are brilliant, and he is very much like some of the men in my life growing up, so they were particularly engaging.

Some of my favourite poetry.
9.5/10

[laudine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poor birds

In the boggy copse. Blue
Dusk presses into their skulls
Electrodes of stars. All night
Clinging to sodden twigs, with twiggy claws,
They dream the featherless, ravenous
Machinery of heaven. At dawn, fevered,
They flee to the field. All day
They try to get some proper sleep without
Losing sight of the grass. Panics
Fling them from hill to hill. They search everywhere
For the safety that sleeps
Everywhere in the closed faces
Of stones.

[Millstone · Rating 2 out of 5]

Difficult to review a collection of poems when you enjoy some a lot and others not so much. It's largely a question of which ones you remember at the time of writing - which may be the last couple if you've spread them out a bit. All I would say is that if you read this set without knowing who wrote them you might not guess how eminent their writer was. Well, I wouldn't. Your sense of eminence might be finely tuned than mine.

[Lucy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having experienced much of what he's poeticized here, I found this collection wonderfully and shudderingly evocative. He was a marvellous writer.

[Monica · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is beautiful, but shockingly grim, poetry where nature, birth, dying and death are made the centre of existence. Wholesome reading for an increasingly urbanised cultural elite?

[Joel Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you read one book about animal husbandry this year, make it this one.

[Beatrice · Rating 3 out of 5]

Crude e grafiche descrizioni della vera vita di un contadino. Alcune poesie sono quasi difficili da leggere proprio per il realismo delle descrizioni, ma sicuramente belle a loro modo.

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly special book - the sort of book that you want to award six stars too, let alone five. In Moortown Diary Ted Hughes records in what he describes as 'notes' the day to day experiences of life on his Devon farm in the 1970s. The immediacy of the record (most of the poems in this collection were written within hours of the events they describe) and the intensity of the lived experience compressed into this remarkable writing is stunning. Visceral and shocking, beautiful and horrific by turns this collection is a real discovery and I can't quite believe that I haven't discovered it before now.

[Phillippa Mills]

Deeply Satisfying



'It grips your heart, and your intestines, like a vice from the first page. He makes language as physical as a bruise, and in these poems beauty and tenderness blend with violence.' John Carey, Sunday Times"

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a genuinely amazing piece of work, very visceral imagery, very strong emotions. I've not read much else of Ted Hughes but I feel glad that this is the first of his collections I've read. 'Dehorning' was one of the best poems I've ever read, I would highly recommend it

[Michael P. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another step in my attempt to become a Ted Hughes fan.

[Shelly Dennison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tough and uncompromising poetry drawn from experience of farming life in Devon. Useful notes and preface by Hughes.