Born in Mytholmroyd, a remote mill town in West Yorkshire, Ted (as he was known to his friends and family) was enormously affected by desolate moorland landscape of his childhood, and also by his father's vivid recollections of brutality of trench warfare. Indeed, his father, who was then a carpenter, was one of only seventeen men from his regiment to have survived at Gallipoli during First World War.

At age of seven his family moved to Mexborough (also in Yorkshire), where his parents opened a stationery and tobacco shop. Here he attended local grammar school, where he first began to write poetry - usually bloodcurdling verses about Zulus and cowboys - before doing two years' national service in Royal Air Force. He later won a scholarship to Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he started reading English Literature but switched to archaeology and anthropology, subjects that were a major influence on development of his poetic awareness. Here he immersed himself in works of Shakespeare, W.B. Yeats and read Robert Graves's “The White Goddess” (1948).

Following his graduation in 1954, he moved to London, where he had a number of interesting jobs, including zoo keeping, gardening and script reading for J. Arthur Rank. He also had several of his poems published in university magazines. In 1956 he and some Cambridge friends started up a literary journal called St. Botolph's Review. It lasted for only one issue but at inaugural party Ted met his future wife, then unknown American poet, Sylvia Plath. Much has been written about Hughes/Plath relationship since that first portentous meeting, but few can doubt that these two brilliantly creative people were enormously attracted to one another, almost from moment they were first introduced. Within just a few short months they were married and living in USA, where Hughes taught English and creative writing at University of Massachusetts in Amherst. And before year was out, he had won an American poetry competition, judged by W.H. Auden, Sir Stephen Spender and Marianne Moore. Hughes once said of this contented period:

"We would write poetry every day. It was all we were interested in, all we ever did." – Ted Hughes

25 WAYS TO PROMOTE YOU AND YOUR WRITING BUSINESS

© 1999-2003 Maggie Klee Lichtenberg, PCC Writing and Publishing Coach

1. Start with a change you’ll need to make if you plan to be successful: Get over being shy.

2. Have mindset to consistently take initiatives. Never stop. It’s not enough to create one brilliant direct mail campaign. Repeat mailing to your list two or three times. And never, never, never take an initiative without following up.

3. Plan one marketing effort each day. Every Sunday evening or Monday morning choose a theme for your week and mark that theme in your calendar each day for coming week.

4. Develop a PR plan for you and your business. Work with a publicist to land features and interviews. Create a simple press kit that contains your mission statement, a warm and friendly letter including company bio, press coverage, personal testimonials, and a professional b&w photo of you.