Ted Hughes Festival brings hip hop to Mexborough
17 August 2018
The fourth Ted Hughes Festival in Mexborough is set to be the most diverse yet, with hip hop and rap artists lining up alongside more traditional poets.
The festival, organised by the Ted Hughes Project (South Yorkshire), will run from September 7 to 9, and includes visual arts, children’s activities and poetry walks, as well as poetry readings.
Former Poet Laureate Ted Hughes lived in Mexborough from 1938 to 1951, with his first published poem featuring in the local grammar school magazine in 1946. Hughes lived above the newsagents in the town, which was run by his parents. He left Mexborough to go to Cambridge University.
Festival creative director Michele Beck said: “Although Hughes moved away from Mexborough in 1951, South Yorkshire was to influence his poetry throughout his life.
“The landscape, flora and fauna of the area underpin and inform much of his work and those familiar with the area will discern a distinctive South Yorkshire temperament in his writing.
“We want to use that connection with a figure of such stature to promote Mexborough and to develop a more positive identity for the town. We also want to bring together different cultures and backgrounds and celebrate diversity.”
The festival will kick off on the evening of Friday 7 with performances by Moor Mother, an international touring musician, poet, visual artist, and workshop facilitator from Philadelphia, and young writers from the Hive South Yorkshire project.
On Saturday 8 there will be a series of activities throughout the day, including a street performance, supported by Doncaster-based Breaking Beats, an organisation which uses hip hop music and art to inspire young people.
In the evening three of the north of England’s most prominent poets Pete Green, Mike Garry and Kate Fox, will perform.
All the indoor events will be at Mexborough Business Centre, which used to be Mexborough Grammar School, which Hughes attended.
The festival finishes on the Sunday with the Ted Hughes Paper Round, a walk in the footsteps of the young Hughes, following his childhood paper round through Mexborough and into Old Denaby.
“The festival and the project are about commemorating Hughes’ time in the town, and developing art and creativity in his name,” said Michele.
“Hughes is often associated with West Yorkshire, but we can lay claim to him here in Mexborough. We know that this is where he really started writing and where his early influences came from. It was in the countryside around Mexborough where Hughes developed his deep knowledge of animals, nature and landscape, and of course fishing.”
The festival will include performances from 16-year-old rap artist Fionn McCloskey from Sheffield, one of the Hive South Yorkshire young writers; rising stars of poetry Nick Makoha and Roger Robinson in their ‘Mix Tape Tour’; Manchester-based Mike Garry whose poetry is regularly heard on the BBC; stand-up poet Kate Fox, a former Poet in Residence for the Great North Run and Glastonbury Festival, and American poet, hip-hop artist and activist Moor Mother, who is also known as Camae Ayewa and whose first album Fetish Bones was named one of the top albums of the year by Rolling Stone and The Wire magazines.
NOTE TO EDITORS
Attached photograph shows Michele Beck. (Photographs of performers available from Michele or Kate.)
For more information about the festival go to http://tedhughesproject.com/festivals/2018-festival/ or contact Michele Beck on 07867 476155 or at info@tedhughesproject.org
The Ted Hughes Project (South Yorkshire) is funded and supported by Arts Council England, Right Up Our Street and Dearne Valley Landscape Partnership. It also receives financial and other support from the Concertina Club, Mexborough Business Centre, the Ted Hughes Network at the University of Huddersfield and Thomas Tunnock Ltd.
Ted Hughes and South Yorkshire
The Hughes family (father Billy, mother Edith, eight year-old Ted and his siblings Gerald and Olwyn) moved to Mexborough from Mytholmroyd in September 1938 when Billy and Edith acquired a newsagent’s shop in the town at 75 Main Street. Hughes lived ‘over the shop’ on Main Street until September 1951, when he went to Cambridge University.
At Mexborough Grammar School, Hughes was introduced him to the poetry and art that would form his taste and shape his own work: Beethoven, Donne, Eliot, Hopkins, Kipling, Lawrence, Yeats and Shakespeare. He published his first poem, ‘Wild West’, in the Mexborough Grammar School magazine, the Don & Dearne, in 1946, and in that year he resolved to become a poet.
By the age of eighteen, Hughes had clearly evolved into the poet of his subsequent fame and was recognised as a poet by his teachers, peers, friends and family.
He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1984 following the death of John Betjeman. Hughes served in this position until his death in 1998.
Additional media contact: Kate Betts on 01226 766900 or at kate@capitalbmedia.co.uk
This press release was prepared by Capital B Media, a public relations and media training agency based in Sheffield, South Yorkshire. For more information, please visit www.capitalbmedia.co.uk.
