New Releases by Ted Hughes

A collection of stories by the poet laureate of England includes among others the fable "O''Kelly''s Angel," about a man who captures and cages an angel, and "The Wound," about an episode in World War II

Blood Wedding is based upon a newspaper fragment which told of a family vendetta and a bride who ran away with the son of the enemy family. Lorca uses the story to investigate subjects which fascinated him such as desire, repression and ritual.

This version of Frank Wedekind''s extraordinary play Spring Awakening was specially commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company. The themes it addresses and the sheer energy of the writing make this masterpiece of German symbolism startlingly relevant today. With its scenes of pubescent angst, sexual outspokenness, rape and homosexuality, the play still, more than one hundred years after it was first staged, has the power to shock. Ted Hughes''s rendition lends the dialogue a particularly modern terseness and bite, drawing out all the erotic energy of the original.

This volume replaced Ted Hughes''s Selected Poems 1957-1981. It contains a larger selection from the same period, to which are added poems from more recent books, uncollected poems from each decade of Ted Hughes''s writing life, and some new work. Another notable feature is the inclusion of poems from his books for younger readers, What is the Truth? and Season Songs.

In this collection, Ted Hughes has written 28 songs of the sea. Here is an eye-view account of what it is to be the small fry of the ocean - a shrimp, sandflea, a mussel or a whelk. The lobster laments his form and the limpet rejoices in her steadfast stand against the stormy surf.

This critical work on Shakespeare attempts to show his complete works - dramatic and poetic - as a single, tightly-integrated, evolving organism. Identifying Shakespeare''s use in the poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, of the two most significant religious myths of the archaic world, Hughes argues that these myths later provided Shakespeare with templates for the construction of every play from All''s Well that Ends Well to The Tempest. He also argues that this development, in turn, represented his poetic exploration of conflicts within the living myth of the English Reformation.

In 1984 Ted Hughes was made Poet Laureate. Since then, he has fulfilled his duties by writing a number of poems celebrating important royal occasions. These are major works, calling on the Laureate''s full powers and embodying a complete vision of royalty and nationhood. Rain-Charm for the Duchy collects these poems for the first time. It also contains a section of notes, throwing light on the context and genesis of each poem.

Brings together three short pieces written in homage to T.S. Eliot. The three pieces were prompted, in turn, by the unveiling of a plaque, by a reading of The Waste Land in a London theatre, and by a centenary dinner.

Wolfwatching, Ted Hughes''s fourteenth collection of poetry, contains several characteristic poems, in which nature is presented with striking exactitude, unclouded by sentiment. But Hughes breaks new ground with a number of intimate and unforgettable poems that memorialize members of his family as they were in his youth, in the years following the First World War.

CHILDREN''S BOOKS/YOUNG ADULT

Explores the strange and wonderful moon-world. The terrain is fantastic, its creatures both intriguing and grotesque, but all is touched by the Poet Laureate''s moon magic.

Sylvia Plath is one of the defining voices in twentieth-century poetry. This classic selection of her work, made by her former husband Ted Hughes, provides the perfect introduction to this most influential of poets. The poems are taken from Sylvia Plath''s four collections Ariel, The Colossus, Crossing the Water and Winter Trees, and include many of her most celebrated works, such as ''Daddy'', ''Lady Lazarus'' and ''Wuthering Heights''.

A collection of works by a contemporary English poet selected from twelve books of poetry written over a 25-year period.

A sequence of poems and drawings which capture the essence of the lonely, mysterious creatures who struggle to survive under the North Star.

A collection of 24 poems grouped to represent the four seasons.