010 - The Thought Fox by Ted Hughes - National Poetry Day

In a slightly different episode than normal, I'm celebrating National Poetry Day by reading the poem The Thought Fox by Ted Hughes.   

A work that links the intimate sighting of a wild fox with inspiration to shift writer's block, I thought looking at this poem, one of Ted Hughes' most famous, would be a great way of combining the world of foxes with a celebration of poetry.

Looking briefly at Ted Hughes' career, as well as the story behind the poem.

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Transcript

Hello, this is Benjamin from the Fox Repellent Expert website and welcome to episode 10 of this podcast.

In this episode, I’m going to do something a bit different and use it as an opportunity to celebrate National Poetry Day 2022, which is an annual celebration of poetry that falls on the first Thursday of October.

To keep things within the purview of this podcast, I’m going to read a poem I recently discovered called ‘The Thought Fox’ by Ted Hughes.

Ted Hughes was one of the most acclaimed English poets of the 20th Century with highly successful poetry collections such as The Hawk in the Rain, Crow and Tales of Ovid. 

He won numerous awards for his work during his lifetime. In 1984, he succeeded Sir John Betjeman as the UK’s Poet Laureate and held the role until his death in 1998. In 2009, the Ted Hughes Award was established and is awarded annually to the most innovative living UK Poet of the year.

Arguably, Ted Hughes is as equally well-known for his tempestuous but productive marriage to the American poet and writer Sylvia Plath. Plath has achieved legendary status for her only novel The Bell Jar and her poetry collection, Ariel. 

After Plath’s untimely death in 1963, Ted Hughes remained publicly silent about their marriage for 35 years, until the final months of his life, when he released Birthday Letters, a collection of 88 poems that addressed their relationship for the first time.

At the time of recording, there’s an excellent documentary on BBC iPlayer, entitled Ted Hughes: Stronger Than Death. I thoroughly recommend it if you want to know more about his life, career and relationship with Sylvia Plath.

Today’s poem ‘The Thought Fox’ is one of Hughes’ most celebrated works, and it comes from his debut collection of poems entitled The Hawk in the Rain, which catapulted him to fame in 1957. 

The genesis of the poem may have been when he was studying English at Cambridge University and felt creatively inhibited by what he called “the terrible suffocating maternal octopus” of literary academia and tradition.

One night during this time, Hughes had a dream. He was approached by an upright fox, who walked like a man but seemed battered and burnt. This fox-man slapped his hand down on the desk and told Hughes, “You’ve got to stop this - you’re destroying us”. As a result of the dream, Hughes quit his stifling English degree and transferred to Anthropology and Archaeology, which saw his literary spark return.

A couple of years later, during another barren writing spell, Hughes returned to the theme of a spiritually-guiding fox and shook himself out of his malaise by writing ‘The Thought Fox’.

The poem begins with a blank page, then seamlessly weaves between internal and external reality as we hear the description of a fox, viewed out of a window crossing the landscape until it comes close enough to smell. At the same time we accept the fox as a metaphor for the rebirth of the writer’s creative and imaginative energies and the poem culminates with a page that has almost magically been filled.

Discovering the poem re-energised me and inspired me to get behind the mic to record this podcast episode. If you’re listening, perhaps your inner motivation will be reawakened and you’ll be inspired to get creative! 

So without further ado, in honour of National Poetry Day 2022, here is The Thought Fox, by Ted Hughes.

THE THOUGHT FOX - by Ted Hughes (1957)

I imagine this midnight moment’s forest:

Something else is alive

Beside the clock’s loneliness

And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:

Something more near

Though deeper within darkness

Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow

A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf;

Two eyes serve a movement, that now

And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow

Between trees, and warily a lame

Shadow lags by stump and in hollow

Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,

A widening deepening greenness,

Brilliantly, concentratedly,

Coming about its own business

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox

It enters the dark hole of the head.

The window is starless still; the clock ticks,

The page is printed.

That’s it for this special episode of the Fox Repellent Expert podcast. If you’re interested in learning more about Ted Hughes, I’ll put some links in the shownotes which you can find at foxrepellentexpert.com/episode10. 

If you found today’s episode interesting, you can subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. 

Thank you very much for listening and I’ll see you next time.