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He was the poet laureate whose harsh, dark evocations of nature made him a staple of the school curriculum even as his doomed marriage to fellow writer Sylvia Plath made him a hate figure for extreme feminists.
Now Ted Hughes may join the pantheon of literary greats honoured in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey alongside William Blake, TS Eliot, Wilfred Owen and Edmund Spenser.
Hughes would become the first poet since Sir John Betjeman, whom he succeeded as laureate in 1984, to be chosen for a plaque in the south transept if the Dean of Westminster accedes to a mounting - if discreet - campaign on his behalf.
Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney heads a roll call of literary figures to have written confidentially to the Dean of Westminster, the Very Rev John Hall, calling for the ultimate accolade to be conferred on Hughes. Other supporters include Sir Andrew Motion, who took over from Hughes as poet laureate, and Lord Bragg as well as prominent academics.
Heaney, who spoke at Hughes's funeral, told the Evening Standard: "Ted Hughes deserves to be in Poets' Corner because he was a visionary poet with a high sense of his calling and high achievement in his art.
"When he began to write, he had a deep sense of himself as inheritor and guardian of the land and language of William Blake and William Shakespeare. Then as he matured and gained in creative power his response to his native English ground induced in him a feeling of responsibility for the fate of the planet as a whole.
"In proclaiming and embodying in his work a holistic sense of life on earth, he became one of the vital presences in 20th-century poetry."
The campaign, coming 11 years after Ted Hughes's death from cancer, has the approval of his widow Carol, daughter Frieda and sister Olwyn.
But the decision to honour anyone in Poets' Corner rests solely with the dean who does not have to consult or seek permission from anyone.
Some poets, including Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning and William Chaucer, are actually buried in the abbey, but there is no suggestion that Hughes would be. The last person to have their ashes interred there was actor Lord Olivier.
Hughes, who was born in Yorkshire in 1930, first made his reputation in 1957 with the publication of The Hawk in the Rain, a book of poems which marked him out as a writer with a distinctive seer-like voice and an ability to bring alive the natural world.
But among his biggest-selling works was his acclaimed final collection, Birthday Letters, in which he broke a long silence to evoke life with Plath, whose suicide provoked blistering attacks on him from some feminists who blamed him for her death.
He also achieved huge popularity among children with his story The Iron Man, which was turned into a Hollywood film. A spokesman for the Dean of Westminster said a number of letters had been received and that the request was being considered.
Reader views (2)
I feel the current Laureate should be buried in Westminster Abbey as a matter of urgency.
- Henry Shoe, Sheffield, England, 01/12/2009 12:14
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I'd agree with 'high sense of his calling' but is he really as good a poet as Blake, Spenser and Eliot?
Hand on heart.
- Nick, London, 01/12/2009 10:38
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