From Tuesday 15th to Friday 18th September 2026 Ted Hughes's alma mater, Pembroke College Cambridge, will be hosting a major international conference organised by the Ted Hughes Society and devoted to the manifold legacy of this great poet, critic, writer for children and for the theatre, and environmentalist. Over three and a half days established scholars and new voices will be sharing their research on many aspects of Hughes's work, including his creative relationship with his first wife Sylvia Plath, whom Hughes met in Cambridge, and considering what it means today. There will be an opportunity to visit the major public exhibition, Living Water: Poetry, Art and the Fight for Clean Riv,ers at Pembroke College's own exhibition room, in the same building as the principal conference venue, and at Cambridge University Library. An optional conference dinner and a range of evening events, with time to explore this beautiful city and what it meant to Hughes and Plath, will ensure a rich stay in Cambridge. Accommodation will be available in Pembroke College.
Plenary speakers include the distinguished critic and former editor at Faber Robert McCrum, who knew Hughes personally, and the leading poet Zaffar Kunial, whose acclaimed collections include England's Green.
We hope that Daniel Huws, Hughes's friend from their undergraduate years in Cambridge in the 1950s, will also be attending the conference. The full conference programme will be published here and on the Ted Hughes Society website from early June.
Registration fees for the conference, payable to the Ted Hughes Society, are as follows: £110 for attendance in person and £75 for attendance via Zoom. In each case, a discount of £10 (to £100 and to £65 respectively) will be available for registrations made before 31 May. In each case Zoom recordings of each session will be made available to attendees after the conference. To register for one of these options please click on the REGISTER HERE button below and follow links, which will ask you for the information we need to keep you informed and for administrative purposes. Registration fees include morning and afternoon drinks and a sandwich lunch. An optional conference dinner in Pembroke's beautiful seventeenth century Old Library, directly below the room Hughes occupied in his final year of undergraduate study in 1953-4, will take place on the evening of Wednesday 16th September.
From 1 August, a limited number of day rates will also be available to book: full days (Tuesday 15, Wednesday 16th, Thursday 17th) at £40 and morning rates (Friday 15th) at £20.
Overnight accommodation for one or more nights from Monday 14th September to Thursday 17th September (student rooms, mostly single occupancy, with shared bathrooms, on the main Pembroke College site; a limited number of en suite double rooms may be available) can be reserved at subsidised rates (approximately £55 ppn single occupancy; approximately £111 double occupancy) from Pembroke College, as can the conference dinner, at £65 per head, including wine, and £50 without wine: please email mrw1002@cam.ac.uk to reserve these, including any dietary requirements if booking the dinner, no later than 31 August. Payment for both accommodation and the conference dinner if requested will be taken on arrival at Pembroke College (card payments only) or may be made in advance if an invoice is requested.