The importance and validity of place to the English poet has long been of prime importance….

For Ted Hughes, not surprisingly, it is the West Riding of Yorkshire, more especially the area around the Calder valley at Hebden Bridge, and to the north of it. In Celtic times, this area was the domain of Elmet, the last of the native tribal lands to fall to the Angles. It subsequently became uninhabited moors and was, 200 years ago, invaded again, this time by industrial progress….

Ted Hughes was born and raised in the area and it has been a binding source for all of his poetic talent and power. The violence in his work, so harsh yet so acceptable and understood, stems from his landscape—whether he be writing the Crow poems, Gaudete, or verse directly related to the moorland parishes. The harshness of his work is abundant in the...