Poetry in the Making: An Anthology

by Ted Hughes

Drawn from Ted Hughes's celebrated programs for the BBC's "Listening and Writing" series, Poetry in the Making is a fresh, student-friendly discussion of what Hughes calls "imaginative writing." Offering generous citations from the work of several English-speaking, mostly modern or contemporary poets--including Hopkins, Dickinson, Eliot, Larkin, Plath, and himself--Hughes provides a useful and readable primer on "the kind of [poetry] writing children can do without becoming false to themselves." Like Kenneth Koch's classic Wishes, Lies, and Dreams, Poetry in the Making presents new ideas on how children and other beginners might best compose their own poems while also presenting candid, and more general, insights that all students and scholars of the art or craft of verse will find inspiring.

And although these pieces were primarily intended to help students improve their creative writingn abilities, they are also an effective introduction to Hughes's own work and the influences other writers have had on him. Hughes, who was Poet Laureate to Queen Elizabeth II at the time of his death in 1998, casually and colorfully discusses how he came to write, what inspires him (and why), and the difficulties that he (and other writers) confront when writing.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, Writing, Literary Criticism, Literature, Anthologies, Criticism

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1967

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

[Matthew Ted · Rating 1 out of 5]

113th book of 2022.

Not good. Shame as Hughes is one of my favourite poets: I remember being swept up by his Birthday Letters as a teenager living away from home and once devouring his Tales From Ovid on a beach in Cornwall between long bouts of swimming. As other reviewers of this funny volume say, this is a very outdated read; it is a look into old teaching styles. His advice for writing is incredibly vague. There are two tiny chapters on writing novels (odd from Hughes) and some of the advice is, without exaggeration, as simply as make sure to use chapters. I learnt nothing from the book. The only good thing was all the example poems he uses to demonstrate his points about writing landscape, weather, animals, etc., sometimes his own poems, sometimes his wife's, and a smattering of other famous names. Overall, a waste of time, though.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This will bring back fond memories of primary school - or so I'm told. I must be one of a handful of Britons who grew up knowing Hughes solely for How the Whale Became.

I've caught up on my reading since then. The book, at first glance, seems like the kind of thing a spotty wannabe might take out the local library: a book printed grubby and well-fingered, underlined and scrawled over.

Big mistake. Huge.

I wish someone had given me this wondrous parcel of poems as a child: 'Badger' by John Clare, 'The Marvel' by Keith Douglas, and other gems by writers as diverse as Emily Dickinson, George Mackay Brown, Edward Thomas and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Hughes' notes in the section titled 'Capturing Animals' are wonderful. ('The minute you flinch, and take your mind off this thing, and begin to look at the words and worry about them...then your worry goes into them and they set about killing each other.')

[The Half-blood Reader]

College reads: I only read chapters/sections relevant to my studies, hence the dnf

[Katia M. Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm in two minds about this. Firstly, I think it is an interesting look at the history of writing in education in Britain in the 1960s and a glimpse at how Hughes approached the construction of poetry. Then I see how dated and banal it is. It'd never make it into a curriculum these days let alone be broadcast as a radio show - particularly the example of learning how to describe something in detail using wandering eyebrows like a travelling Jew's and the banana fingers of an African American jazz performer. Sure, it paints a picture, but it's an offensive caricature.

I'm also a fan of the 'know the rules before you break or ignore them' school of thought when it comes to writing. Hughes seems to be advocating a 'just let words out' technique. His section on novel writing was particularly irksome. I'm not a heavy planner with writing, I like to discover what's going to happen, but there needs to be some idea of structure or you write yourself into a corner. Hughes acknowledges this, but seems to think it is because writers have written themselves out of their area of general interest rather than lost the plot - literally.

Ted Hughes wrote some wonderful poetry, things to last an age and have much to teach. This little book? I'm not so sure.

[Matthew Lloyd · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are two things to keep in mind with regards to Ted Hugh's Poetry in the Making:
1. It's (nearly) sixty years old! This is not the most up-to-date scientific research on creativity and poetry. It's from a time when universalism was a more common operating principle, when sexism and racism were more casually to hand, and as such it replicates a lot of that bullshit. There's more recent stuff that's likely to work better for anyone that doesn't want to encounter that.
2. It's targeted at kids. I think this is a good thing, even if I also think that no kid in the twenty-first century should go near it. Being for kids it kind of gets at some general principles that I think are valuable and that, if you're coming back to poetry in your late 30s, as I am, are quite useful to revise.

Poetry in the Making does not contain a lot of technical advice. It isn't about meter or word sounds or anything. It's about the gut feeling that goes into poetry. It's about getting inspired. And, as it's for kids, it's about doing so in a learning environment. It's got some interesting stuff from the perspective of 'how Ted Hughes thought about poetry', and it's got some useful exercises that, as an adult, we might try to employ to get out some of the things that are stuck in your head. It's not the final word on writing poetry, but it is an interesting insight into one man's method.

[Fin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Feel like the poetry manual/self-exegesis should be a more common genre, i.e., a compilation of your poetry with some words on either side explaining how they came to be, Vita Nuova style.

Anyway, this is just lovely. So wise and well observed and shot through with Hughes' genius. Not sure this would be all that useful in the classroom but for any writer or reader it's fascinating stuff, almost stunning in its clarity and perception.

All imaginative writing is to some extent the voice of what is neglected or forbidden, hence its connection with the past in a nostalgic vein and the future in a revolutionary vein.

[J. Alfred · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hughes as pedagogue! Who knew?
This is a thin handy volume for the classroom teacher or directly for the student. Its purpose is to provide a selection of models of different kinds of writing and provide usable exercises for the teacher to put in his or her toolbox. A lot of these would make strong Bell Ringers or journal prompts, or things to fold into what you've already got.
I think that this is worth having on your shelves if you teach a writing-centric class.

[Not Well Read · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hughes manages to avoid specifics in this guide to poetry-writing, giving a liberating tone to the thing, but at the same time ends up providing some quite specific guidelines in terms of the mindset of a poet and how to analyse a subject, reflecting Hughes’ own practical approach as well as setting ground rules that still allow for freedom of expression. It reminds me somewhat of a cookbook I came across where the author would describe particular recipes and methods at length, but refuse to put ingredients, measurements or instructions.

The example poems that intermingle with his subjects (perhaps the ‘pictures’ in this analogy) at times directly, sometimes more tangentially, reflect his point – I suppose these themselves in their diversity demonstrate, all the same, that some rules are there to be broken. I was amused, particularly, by how brief and straightforward the sections on novel-writing are – he makes it seem so easy (I say this as a poet who is struggling with some ideas for longer works in prose).

Some chapters are less successful than others (I liked the ‘Meet My Folks’ family chapter a little, but it covered much the same ground as the ‘People’ chapter, and the Moon chapter provides imaginative poetry ideas but seems a little out of place), but the beginning and ending of the book seem to tie it all together and make it sound. Although it seems to be primarily aimed at teachers and students, the guide provides some good examples for each subject matter and is brief and straightforward while still providing helpful prompts for the potential use of those older and (perhaps) more sophisticated.

[Mina · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short and sweet read - includes a wide variety of selections of poetry from names such as Plath, Roethke, Vasco Popa and many more. Complimented with insightful comments from Ted Hughes on poetry of different thematic topics (animals, people, wind & weather, etc.).

One of my favourite selections:

"“...imagine what you are writing about. See it and live it. Do not think it up laboriously, as if you were working out mental arithmetic. Just look at it, touch it, smell it, listen to it, turn yourself into it. When you do this, the words look after themselves, like magic.”

[Lauma Lapa · Rating 5 out of 5]

i really wish someone would write a book like this for the latvian schools. to teach to see, to capture, to think, to reflect, to name.
so perfectly.

[GC · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Many people, perhaps most of us, do think in words all the time, and keep a perpetual running commentary going or a mental conversation, about everything that comes under our attention or about something in the back of our mind. But it is not essential. And the people who think in dumb pictures and dim sensings seem to manage just as well. Maybe they manage even better. You can imagine who is likely to be getting most out of reading the gospels, for instance: the one who discusses every sentence word by word and argues the contradictions and questions every obscurity and challenges every absurdity, or the one who imagines, if only for a few seconds, but with the shock of full reality, just what it must have been like to be standing near when the woman touched Christ's garment and he turned round.'


I'm currently reading Heather Clark's sublime biography, 'Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath', and being inspired by Plath's relationship to poetry, I wanted to take up the practice again. For those who don't know, Ted Hughes was married to the American poet, Sylvia Plath, until taking her own life in 1963. Plath was an absolute tour de force of a person: confident, funny, inquisitive, extremely driven, constantly brimming with creativity and quite a different poet and person (in some crucial ways) to Hughes. She would win the first posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 1982 for her 'Collected Poems', for which Hughes provided the Introduction. I sketched a little of her biography, because it was she who worked as Hughes's literary agent, encouraging him to publish to the wider public, and the development of the two are inseparable in my eyes. Until reading Clark's book, I never realised how incredible a writer Hughes was and just how influential - he was the contemporary of Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, and T.S Eliot even supported him in winning a $5000 Guggenheim Award in 1959. In assessing the 20th century, critics consider him to be one of the greatest poets of his generation and one of its best writers. This eventually lead to his appointment as the UK's Poet Laureate in 1984, which he held until his death in 1998. One only has to read 'The Thought-Fox' or 'Pike' to understand why. This led me to returning to this book that I had first read two years ago, but not truly appreciated.

'Poetry in the Making' was written in 1967, and is a based on a collection of programmes that Hughes wrote for the BBC Schools Broadcasting Department, for their series 'Listening And Writing' and another series 'Religion In Its Contemporary Context.' The aim of the book is in service of teachers to use with their students, but it can be read by anyone with an interest in poetry.

In the first chapter, 'Capturing Animals', Hughes connects his interest in poems as analogous to his former interest in capturing animals. This sounds a little gruesome, but he explains that 'the poem is a new species of creature, a new specimen of the life outside your own.' Much like other books on writing, he tells us we must write with the language of the senses rather than with flat, abstract words. But how does one find these right words for a poem? Hughes explains in this wonderful chapter:

'That one thing is, imagine what you are writing about. See it and live it. Do not think it up laboriously, as if you were working out mental arithmetic. Just look at it, touch it, smell it, listen to it, turn yourself into it. When you do this, the words look after themselves, like magic. If you do this you do not have to bother about commas or full-stops or that sort of thing. You do not look at the words either. You keep your eyes, your ears, your nose, your taste, your touch, your whole being on the thing you are turning into words. The minute you flinch, and take your mind off this thing, and begin to look at the words and worry about them... they your worry goes into them and they set about killing each other. So you keep going as long as you can, then look back and see what you have written. After a bit of practice, and after telling yourself a few times that you do not care how other people have written about this thing, this is the way you find it; and after telling yourself you are going to use any old word that comes into your head so long as it seems right at the moment of writing it down, you will surprise yourself. You will read back through what you have written and you will get a shock. You will have captured a spirit, a creature.'

To Hughes, the writing of poetry is an imaginative act. As he did in the 'The Thought-Fox', he is writing within the boundaries of his room, and in his imagination he conjures a fox. With the fox present, he engages in a concentrative act of fixing it there in his mind, harboring it under the inspection of the five senses, transforming into it, and then the words which best fit this patient reverie tend to arise. A clear converse of this is that if one cannot imagine vividly enough, or one is trying to write a poem while distracted, then the words have no choice but to conceal themselves. This makes sense. If one is glancing from the half-scrawled page to a TV show, or they can only initiate two of the five senses, then how could the fox willfully disclose the totality of herself? It is precisely because Hughes has been so attentive that he has been able to notice, 'A fox's nose touches twig, leaf' and 'Sets neat prints into the snow.' I definitely did not notice most of these things when trying the exercise! This is a dual theme in the book, particularly in the chapters 'Learning to Think' and 'Words and Experience'. That is, Hughes emphasises both the crux of thinking as a poet as concentrating deeply on an object, and that despite most people thinking in words all the time, we should try to develop the ability to think in images. Returning to the fox, he touches on the merit of capturing it:

'So, you see, in some ways my fox is better than an ordinary fox. It will live for ever, it will never suffer from hunger or hounds. I have it with me wherever I go. And I made it. And all through imagining it clearly enough and finding the living words.'

Hughes later goes on to provide a counterpoint to advice from 'The Writer's Eye', which gave the exercise of writing as if one were a camera, only using sensorial words. He explains that in describing people, we can't make them come alive by sketching in ill-prepared generalities. Although we might be seeing degrees more in paying closer attention, our descriptions could still apply to innumerable people. He explains that the use of similes is the way by which we can cast distinctiveness:

'And so on. To describe a man at that rate you would need a whole book, and you would be bored reading the first paragraph. But did anything in that passage strike my imagination? Yes. One thing did. When the man's hair was described as the colour of a rough coconut, I not only saw exactly what colour it was, I even felt its texture, its rough, bristly grain. This comparison set my imagination into action. It is one of those curious facts that when two things are compared in a metaphor or a simile, we see both of them much more distinctly than if they were mentioned separately as having nothing to do with each other. A comparison is like a little puzzle. When I say, "His hair was like a rough coconut's" - you say to yourself, "How can it be?" And this rouses your imagination to supply the answers, showing just how hair can be like coconut hair, without the head being an actual coconut. You are forced to look more closely, and to think, and make distinctions, and be suprised at what you find - and all this adds to the strength and vividness of your final impression.'

Separate from Hughes's advice on writing, the book is also a wonderful anthology of other poets, corresponding to the themes of the particular chapters. These include poems by: Elizabeth Bishop, Theodore Roethke, Sylvia Plath and Vasko Popa.

Overall, this is a charming text on poetry. After reading more of Hughes's poems and contextualising him, I will increase my rating of this text. For someone interested in poetry, this is an invitation by a poet in the upper echelons of the form. Hughes is personable, and will no doubt help those hoping to capture the animals of the world as he once did.

[Henry Sturcke · Rating 3 out of 5]

This slim paperback collects a series of radio talks English poet Ted Hughes gave for the BBC Schools Service in the 1960s. That fact evokes a time when you could expect a class of ten-to-fourteen-year-olds to pay attention to a radio in the classroom. No powerpoint, no video, no smartboard. “Wireless” meant something else in those days.
So the technology of delivery is outdated. But what about the content? It holds up well. Hughes has thought intelligently about what to present in just nine lessons that will set pupils off on the adventure of creating their own poems and stories. He does this without condescending to his listeners.
Hughes illustrates his points with a selection of poems, both his own and those of other poets. For publication, he supplemented the talks with notes for classroom teachers and additional verses.
The book closes with a short chapter in which Hughes tackles the challenge of correlating experience with words. The difficulty of finding just the right word is evident, but the other half of the equation presents a challenge, as well. We are barely aware of all that our senses take in; in what sense is that experience? (In an earlier chapter, he asks how many of us, appearing in court, would want to have our case decided by a jury that recalled no more of the evidence than we do of last week’s lessons). Hughes counters this by speculating that a sense called psychometry may be something we all have, not just the few for whom it is documented. This final chapter is not numbered, as the others are, which leads me to think it was not one of the broadcast talks. Possibly a wise decision; I didn’t notice this anomaly at first and found myself wondering what 10-to-14-year-olds, sitting at their desks as the words came out of a wooden box, would have made of it.
I think this book would still be valuable for anyone tasked with introducing poetry to children, or for adults who want to bootstrap themselves into the matter of reading and writing poems.

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a great little book. I might not think much of Ted Hughes, or most of his poems, but I did learn a lot from this slim volume which seems to have been put together from a series of TV programmes on poetry which TH created for schoolchildren. In between sample poems about i) Animals, ii) Wind and weather, iii) People. iii) Learning to think afresh, iv) Landscapes, v) Family and other people, vi 'Moon' or other imaginative creations, it gives exercises for teachers to help them inspire children to unleash their innate creativity and to get writing. Setting a topic and limited timeframe seem to be key. Since I'm currently suffering from writer's block, I found it to be like a breath of fresh air and it made me want to get writing. In fact, TH's down-to-earth, succinct and clear guidelines are inspiration in themselves! Much better than any advice or tuition I've ever received in a classroom - and I've tried a couple courses.
I understand now that poetry - any fictional writing, for that matter - depends on concentration and powers of observation, and a willingness to try. Practice makes perfect. There's nothing mystical about it, and it doesn't require some great literary sensibility possessed by only a few.
I got this as a library book but it's so handy that I think I'm now going to have to buy a copy, especially as all excuses for delaying a daily writing practice are now gone.

[Howard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Habitat destruction that affects organisms need for warmth and for food in the environment is part of the reasons for biodiversity loss.

Ted Hughes poetry book (1st edition 1967) draws the line between the similarity between poetry making and zoo-keeping. The spirit or essence of a poem is to capture in words a linguistic expression of a living organism, be it a mouse, a plant or an uncle or the weather. Such phenomena have characters that can be inspired and communicated in poetry. Poetry in the Making is a great book, suitable for people who have realized that poetry making is an activism, good for expressing problems in words, to allow the problems to be begun to be understood by the mind of the occupant of the body whose mind is attached, and any other readers.

With the idioms of Sarah Gatley, cat with a cat-flap in a door attached to a house for her and those of Bill Bryson, a guide to the body for occupants ... and activism - the war of art - and with Ted Hughes Poetry in the making advice, poetry becomes an unstoppable form of expression.

Just write in cadences ...

[Domhnall · Rating 5 out of 5]

An experience of my schooldays that has never left me was being required (I was not a volunteer) to take part in a debate on the proposition "There is life on the moon." My task was to argue for the motion and I found, when I stood to speak, that I had not one single thought to express. It is only now, in retirement and reading these lessons by Ted Hughes, that I have finally worked out what I might have said.

[Salli · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is such an interesting book on so many levels.
It brought back my school days and all those school radio programmes I listened to - thought not these unfortunately.
It is also a wonderful romp through poetry, simply explained with enthusiasm and with lots of lovely examples. As an adult I might have wondered if it was not condescending but it reminded me why I like poetry and why I write it and gave me lots of prompts and ideas to explore.

[Rebecca Jackson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Initially I wanted and expected something different from this book - I wanted more of an instruction on how to write poetry. This book will not provide that as such. However, as I was reading I realised that an instruction manual on 'how to write' poetry was not what I needed. Rather, what I got from this book was inspiration - places to look and how to harness my feelings, emotions and surroundings for poetry. I enjoyed the extracts of Ted Hughes' poetry too, which are as equally inspiring.

[Leane · Rating 3 out of 5]

This small volume is a mixed bag but would be of interest to any fans of Ted Hughes who wish to know more of his insights.

Intended to be additional material for teachers, there are some interesting thoughts to be found within and it's overall a great trip down memory lane for those who were schooled in the late 1970s through to the early 1990s.

However, to the more modern reader, a lot of this text may not seem relevant.

[Josefina Strawberries · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tal vez es básico lo que explica para aspirantes a escritores, la verdad no lo sé, pero son puntos claves que todo escritor debería tener en cuenta. A veces, los poemas que usa de ejemplo son tediosos pero porque mi inglés todavía está en construcción y el diccionario me tuvo que ayudar más de lo que me hubiese gustado. Un libro que leeré y usaré como guía cuando esté con poco estancada en mi escritura. Recomendado.

[jvickery88 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mr Hughes is a gifted writer, no doubt about that and I look forward to reading more of his works. This book is a good resource for writers and the author is very engaging and often calls the reader to really think and ponder deeply on things. I certainly never thought I'd be interested in the sections related to writing about animals or landscapes but the choices of poems he uses are really good.
3.5/5 from me.

[Neil Webb · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm going to say 2.5 stars for this.

2 stars because the writing advice boiled down to 'write what you know and like' but 'don't think about it too much whilst always using the right words'

Extra half a star, though, for the last paragraph, which I feel genuinely taught me something about poetry; "[W]hen words can manage something of...the vital signature of a human being - not of an atom, or of a geometrical diagram, or of a heap of lenses - but a human being, we call it poetry."

[Jacqueline · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a great book this. I wasnt sure what to expect when I first started it but it had made me take time to think about the subject of my poetry.

Written.first in 1967 it is aimed at Teachers to include in their teaching plans.
It is.old fashioned and quaint but still very relevant today.

A great addition to my library.

[Anjloves]

Ted Hughes shed a bright light into the beauty and fragility of writing poems. Lots of great insights delivered with sliver of humour too. There are bonus chapters about novel writing too. Will definitely refer to this book from time to time when writing.

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Useful for his insights into the writing of other poets

[Jess · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lovely little snapshot of how to write/teach poetry! Very useful and inspiring :)

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

The occasional stimulating thought in the first few chapters, but you've got to work for them, and it gets worse from there.

[Isobel Abrams · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting look at Hughes' writing practice. The last two chapters are a too vague and I lost interest, but I enjoyed his poetry selections. A nice easy read, even if a little outdated now

[Fee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cracking up at the idea of Ted Hughes, deeply earnest, trying to teach a class of primary six weans how to write a novel.

[Ellie Salt · Rating 2 out of 5]

really short book, but even then i had to push myself to get through it.
giving it 2 stars because i thought some of the poems were beautifully written however the others just didn’t catch my attention or evoke any feelings.

[Russio · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an odd book from an odd time and Ted Hughes comes across in it as both a revolutionary, freeing up language by giving his student-readers permission to use it, and a traditionalist, in talking about "bad poetry" as an arbritary matter.

In nine chapters he tends to espouse a view of how poetry should be written (or novels). Often there is some quite useful guidance here. He then exemplifies with poems that back up his view (sometimes perfectly, sometimes more obliquely, occasionally "at a real push"). Finally he offers notes to an educator teaching the skills he is outlining.

As a educational text it is better than nothing, although the address to his audience both expects much from them (i.e. to appreciate the feelings of getting lost in a landscape), and little at the same time - there is sometimes a whiff of a sneer of condescension about his comments (he suggests his charges may have little success).

My feelings were very mixed about this and a I feel it reflected both a great poet and a writer operating in unusual times, as the sixties opened up an interest in creativity coupled with a formal regard and snobbery that persisted from earlier times. This tension between creativity and notions of approved quality persists to this day.