Moortown Diary

Uncorrected Advance Proof. 8vo. Pp. xi, [blank], 68. Printed red wraps. Originally published in 1978 in a limited edition as Moortown Elegies, and in 1979, along with other poetic sequences, as Moortown. With added dates of composition and a Preface and Notes by Hughes.

An improvised verse journal, recording Hughes' experience as a working farmer in the early 1970s, when he and his wife Carol worked a farm near Winkleigh, Devon. "It grips your heart, and your intestines, like a vice from the first page. He makes language as physical as a bruise, and in these poems beauty and tenderness blend with violence." –John Carey, Sunday Times