This episode of the Ted Hughes Society podcast is a reading of his own poems by Grahame Davies - poet, author, editor, librettist, psycho-geographer, literary critic and member of the Ted Hughes Society.
Graham was brought up in the former coal mining village of Coedpoeth near Wrexham in north east Wales, and received a BA (Hons) in English from Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridgeand a doctorate from the University of Wales for research into the writings of R. S. Thomas, Saunders Lewis, T.S. Eliot and Simone Weil.
Grahame worked as a journalist, for newspapers and then for the BBC, where he became News gathering Editor for BBC Wales before joining the Royal Household as Assistant Private Secretary to The Prince of Wales, later King Charles, becoming Deputy Private Secretary. Grahame left the royal household in October 2023 to become Director of Mission and Strategy for the Church in Wales.
Grahame is the author of 20 books including poetry collections in both Welsh and English, psycho-geography, novels, and intercultural studies. As a librettist and lyricist, he has collaborated with many leading composers including Sir Karl Jenkins, Paul Mealor, Sarah Class, Debbie Wiseman, Roderick Williams and Joanna Gill, and his song Sacred Fire - to music by Sarah Class - was performed by Pretty Yende at the coronation of King Charles and Queen Camilla in 2023.
As a Welsh language poet, he is the author of three solo volumes. In 1997, his first volume, Adennill Tir (Barddas), a book arising from the 11 years he spent in Merthyr Tydfil in the south Wales Valleys, won the Harri Webb Memorial Prize.[3] In 2001, his second volume, Cadwyni Rhyddid (Barddas), was awarded the Wales Arts Council's 2002 Book of the Year award at the Hay on Wye Festival.
As an English language poet, he published a bilingual volume of poetry, Ffiniau/Borders, jointly with Elin ap Hywel, with Gomer press in 2002, and his in English, Lightning Beneath the Sea, was published by Seren Press in 2012. His second, A Darker Way, also from Seren, appeared in 2024.
Interfaith relations have been one of his major concerns, and in 2002, Seren published his study, The Chosen People, examining the relationship of the Welsh and the Jewish people as reflected in literature; a second study on Wales and Islam, The Dragon and the Crescent, also from Seren, was published in 2011.
Grahame was a board member of the Welsh Academi from 2005-2011 and Welsh language editor of Poetry Wales magazine until 2002. Grahame is a frequent contributor of articles and reviews to journals and his work has been widely translated and anthologised. He was Vice President of Goodenough College in London and an Honorary Research Fellow in Cardiff University. In 2023 Graham was made a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order.
if you have any comments about the podcast, any suggestions for furture episodes, or would like any information on the Ted Hughes Society, please contact me by email at membership@thetedhughesssociety. I look forward to hearing from you, and please do subscribe, rate and review this podcast - it does help others who might be interested in poetry or the work of Ted Hughes to find the podcast.
The opening and closing music is from Beethoven's String Quartet No 14, opus 131, performed by the Orion String Quartet. (The extract is reproduced under Creative Commons licence IMSLP: Creative Commons Atribution Non-commercial No Derivative 3.0.)
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