Ted Hughes died in 1998, and we are still arguing about his legacy. In this series of the Radio 3 Essay, leading poets bring a sharp eye to the poems themselves, reminding us why Hughes is regarded as one of the 20th-century's greatest writers, and exploring how the works match up to, inform and contradict what we know of the man.

Ted Hughes is perhaps best known for his poems about creatures - for poems like ‘The Thought Fox’, ‘Pike’ and for books like 'Crow'. In today's essay, Helen Mort thinks about what animals signify in Hughes's work and how they might connect to the way the poet writes about the tricky, mysterious lives of others, whether human or animal.

Recorded before a live audience at the BBC's Contains Strong Language Festival in Hull in 2018.

Written and read by Helen Mort.