For the first time, the vast canon of Ted Hughes's poetry together in one beautiful and collectable paperback edition. The Collected Poems spans fifty years of work, from Hawk in the Rain to the best-selling Birthday Letters. It also includes the complete texts of such seminal publications as Crow and Tales from Ovid as well as those children's poems that Hughes felt crossed over into adult poetry. Most significantly it also includes small press publications and editions that, until now, remain uncollected and have never before been available to a general readership. Ted Hughes - former Poet Laureate and the winner of the Whitbread and Forward Prizes - here demonstrates his presiding importance in English and twentieth-century poetry. 'A guardian spirit of the land and language.' Seamus Heaney