Ann Skea, expert on Ted Hughes and spirituality, the occult and the Goddess reflects on the vacanas, the short 'hymns and psalms to a nameless female deity' which end the epilogue to Gaudete (first published 1977). Introduced by Katherine Robinson.

Ann Skea was born in England and migrated to Australia with her husband and children in 1967. She lived in Hong Kong between 1976 and 1979, and currently lives in Sydney, although for family reasons, she also spends a good deal of time in London. Ann is trained as a pharmacist. She has a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and English literature, a master’s degree in literature and a Ph.D. She obtained her degree as a mature-age student at the University of New England in Australia. Her doctorate and the area of her continuing scholarly research concerns the work of the late British Poet Laureate, Ted Hughes. Ann is the author of Ted Hughes: The Poetic Quest (University of New England, 1994), and is an internationally recognized and widely published scholar specializing in the work of Ted Hughes. Her Ted Hughes web pages (https://ann.skea.com/THHome.htm) are archived by the British Library. She is a regular book reviewer for various magazines and is a freelance writer and photographer specializing in travel, myth and culture. She has also published widely in magazines and journals. In 2016, Ann Skea was elected as an associate scholar at Pembroke College, Cambridge.

The podcast is once again introduced by Katherine Robinson. Katherine is a research student at Pembroke College, Cambridge, working on how Ted Hughes reimagined and retold early Celtic mythology in his poetry, and is the bibliographer for the Ted Hughes Society. Before coming to Pembroke College Katherine studied at Ameherst College, Massachusetts and Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in The London Magazine, Poetry Ireland, Kenyon Review, and The Hudson Review.

The opening and closing music is from Beethoven's String Quartet No 14, opus 131, performed by the Orion String Quartet. (The extract is reproduced under Creative Commons licence IMSLP: Creative Commons Atribution Non-commercial No Derivative 3.0.)

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