Michael Dawson obituary

Michael Dawson, left, with the poet Ted Hughes. Michael commissioned Hughes and the artist Leonard Baskin to create a new work, Cave Birds, for the Ilkley Literature festival Photograph: None

In the dedication of the copy of Cave Birds belonging to my father, Michael Dawson, its author, Ted Hughes, wrote: “For Michael, who provided the incubator.” It was a fitting tribute to Michael, who has died aged 90. He was founder of the Ilkley Literature festival – and in 1975, he built his second programme around Hughes and his work.

Of four Hughes events, Cave Birds was the most dramatic. Michael had commissioned Hughes and the artist Leonard Baskin to create words and images to develop the narrative started in their 1970 collaboration, Crow. The result was Cave Birds, a work that is dramatic and visceral in both performed and published forms.