1. An unpublished interview with Peter Orr, from the Recorded Sound Department of the British Council. Tape No.257 (1963. (The tape is available at the National Sound Archive, Sagar and Tabor, Ted Hughes: A Bibliography, E 1, F 5).

2. The Arvon Foundation was set up in 1971 to run short courses for “apprentice writers” (Hughes’ description of them). The first courses were run at Lumb Bank, a mill–owner’s house in Hebden Bridge, Yorkshire, which was owned by Hughes.

3. A Conversation with Ted Hughes about the Arvon Foundation,(Arvon Press, 1976).

4. Hughes’ Foreword to The Way We Write, by John Moat and John Fairfax, initiators of the Arvon Foundation. (Elm Tree Books, 1981. p.xvi).

5. ME–1. ‘Myth and Education’, Children’s Literature in Education 1, APS Publications, New York, March 1970, pp.1:55–70.

ME–2. ‘Myth and Education’, Writers, Critics and Children, Fox, Hammond, Jones, Smith, Sterck (eds), Heinemann, London, 1976. WP.136–153.

6. Hughes, ‘The Hanged Man and the Dragonfly: Note for a Panegyric Ode on Leonard Baskin’s Collected Prints’, Introduction to The Complete Prints of Leonard Baskin, Fern and Sullivan (eds.), Brown Little, Boston, 1894, p.22. WP 84–102

7. Hughes, ‘Secret Ecstasies’, review of Shamanism by Mircea Eliade, The Listener, 72, 29 October 1964, p.677–8.

8. Hughes, ‘Secret Ecstasies’.

9. Faas, E. ‘Ted Hughes and Crow’, London Magazine, Vol.10, Jan.1971. The Unaccommodated Universe, Black Sparrow Press, Santa Barbara, 1980, pp.204 and 212.

10. Sagar, K. ‘Fourfold Vision in Hughes’, The Achievement of Ted Hughes, Manchester University Press, 1983, pp.285–312.

11. Faas, pp.190–1.

12. Hughes, ‘The Hanged Man and the Dragonfly’, WP.92.

13. Lorca, F.G. ‘Play and Theory of Duende’, Deep Song and Other Prose, Maurer (ed. and trans.), New Directions Publishing Corporation, N.Y., 1980, p.43–4.

14. Lorca, p.53.

15. Hughes, ‘The Hanged Man and the Dragonfly’, WP.92.

16. Sir Alister Hardy examines these experiences in detail in The Spiritual Nature of Man, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1979. Ch.6. pp.81–90.

17. Faas, p.190.

18. F.Nietzsche, ‘The Birth of Tragedy’ in Philosophy, Random House, (undated), p.202.

19. Nietzsche, p.171–2.

20. Nietzsche, p.174.

21. Nietzsche, p.221.

22. Nietzsche, p.175.

23. Nietzsche, p.271.

24. Hughes, untitled review of Primitive Song by C.M. Bowra, The Listener, 3 May 1962. ‘Strong Feelings’, WP.33–5.

25. Hughes, ‘The Hanged Man and the Dragonfly’, WP.92.

26. Hughes, Interview with Drew Heinze, The Paris Review, Spring 1995, No. 134, pp.55–94.

27. Quoted by A,C.H. Smith in Orghast at Persespolis, Eyre and Methuen, 1972, p.45.

28. Fass, p.200.

29. Sylvia Plath, Letters Home, Aurelia Plath (ed.) Harper and Row, 1975. Letters for 23 and 29 April 1956, and July 1958.

30. Fass, p.205.

31. Faas, p.206.

32. M.Eliade, Shamanism, Princetown University Press, p.182.

33. Fass, p.198.

34. Hughes, ‘Secret Ecstasies'’, pp.677–8.

35. Hughes told this story many times. His 1993 version can be found in ‘The Burnt Fox’, WP.8–9.

36. Faas, pp.123–4 and 139. John Heilpern, The Conference of the Birds, Faber, 1977, pp.11–12.

37. Plath, Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams, Faber, 1979. pp.48–55. Sylvia Plath Collected Poems, Faber,1989, p.42.

38. Fass , p.210.

39. Leonard Scigaj, The Poetry of Ted Hughes, University of Iowa Press, 1986. pp.253–4.

40. Eliade, Shamanism, p.168.