Edward James Hughes Edward James Hughes is one of the most outstanding living British poets. In 1984 he was awarded the title of the nation's Poet Laureate. He came into prominence in the late fifties and early sixties, having earned a reputation of a prolific, original and skilful poet, which he maintained to the present day. Ted Hughes was born in 1930 in Yorkshire into a family of a carpenter. After graduating from Grammar School he went up to Cambridge to study English, but later changed to Archaeology and Anthropology. At Cambridge he met Sylvia Plath, whom he married in 1956. His first collection of poems Hawk in the Rain was published in 1957. The same year he made his first re