Towards a poetics of field theatre: situated acts of poem-making in the work of Ted Hughes

ABSTRACT

Ted Hughes’ poems in Moortown Diary log experience of farming in North Devon in the 1970s. They were written during or shortly after the encounters that prompted them, remaining largely unaltered. Statements and letters lay bare his method’s situated acts of experience giving rise to impulses. This essay considers how such situated acts constitute a theatre-site of writing which opens and remains live towards acts of reading. It contrasts a letter written by Hughes four years before writing the poem ‘Coming Down through Somerset’, suggesting the former is a dress rehearsal and beginning of continuous duration which includes the writing of the final poem. And it considers how such situated acts stage theatre inside performance; James Hart’s idea of ‘rumour’ generating audiences through hearsay; Beatrice Fraenkel’s concept of ‘written speech acts’ as texts which include readers in acts of writing, being crucial propositions. Peter Brook, Grotowski, Wordsworth’s ‘spots of time’, Coleridge’s site poems, support a suggestion that live situated acts of writing intend an experience which gives rise to trace texts that await their readers’ participation. A simple architectural model is drawn: a studio-theatre in which writer and reader can, by a Proustian treatment of time, be simultaneously present.

KEYWORDS:

• Writing
• poetry
• creativity
• critical reading
• authorship

Acknowledgements

Extracts of poetry from Ted Hughes, Collected Poems are reprinted with permission from Faber.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Sean Borodale is Lecturer in Environmental Writing (Poetry) at Bath Spa University and an Associate Scholar at Trinity College Cambridge. Fellowships include Visiting Fellow at the Moore Institute NUI Galway; Visiting Fellow at the Oscar Wilde Centre, Trinity College Dublin; Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College Cambridge. His poetry has been shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize and Costa Book Awards, and his radio work awarded a Radio Academy Gold Award for Best Feature or Documentary.