Dr Mark Wormald is interviewed about how Pembroke College came to acquire the archive of Irish expressionist painter Barrie Cooke (1931-2014)

Image credit: Ted Hughes, cartoon of the Morrigu eating the Dagda, plus marginal notes and poem ‘Trenchford on Dartmoor’ (1990–92), in the guest book of Barrie Cooke and Jean Valentine. Also poems inscribed by Dennis O’Driscoll and Julie O’Callaghan. Courtesy of The Estates of Ted Hughes and Dennis O’Driscoll and of Julie O’Callaghan. Image: Mark Wormald

Pembroke Fellow Dr Mark Wormald, who has closely studied how central Ted Hughes’ love of fishing was to his approach to poetry and life, first came across mention of Barrie Cooke in Hughes’s unpublished fishing diaries in the British Library.

This mention prompted Dr Wormald to visit Barrie Cooke in Ireland, which is when the existence of the archive, consisting of papers, poems and letters sent to the painter by a range of leading writers and artists, came to light. The most important of the papers are by two of Barrie Cooke’s closest friends, Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney (1939-2013) and Poet Laureate Ted Hughes (1930-1998; Pembroke 1951). Barrie Cooke produced 150 paintings, drawings and prints in response to his friends’ work, only a handful of which have ever been exhibited or published.

Pembroke’s announcement drew a range of media attention in Britain and Ireland, some of which is gathered here:

The University of Cambridge website.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-54906863

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/nov/14/treasure-trove-of-unseen-hughes-and-heaney-writing-found

https://www.rte.ie/culture/2020/1113/1178047-seamus-heaney-ted-hughes-and-the-barrie-cooke-archive

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/irish-painter-s-estate-includes-unpublished-heaney-poem-1.4409996

hetedhughessociety.org/news/2020/11/14/the-barrie-cooke-archive-pembroke-college-cambridge

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