During my tempestuous teenage years, I was attracted to the work of Sylvia Plath. I voraciously read her poems, as well as The Bell Jar and Paul Alexander’s 2003 biography, Rough Magic. Her work resonated with me unlike any poet I had read before. Ted Hughes, of course, was mentioned, but only as the villain in the story of her tragic life. At one point, I felt I had to stop reading Plath’s work, as my own poems were sounding too similar to hers. After reading of the various abuse allegations against Ted Hughes, I found myself avoiding his work as well.Article continues after advertisement
In 2017, I visited the Calder Valley in England. I stood at Plath’s grave, and also visited Lumb Bank, the large mill house Hughes purchased in 1969, which now serves as a residential writers’ retreat. I felt a strong connection to the land and an urgent sense that I must write here. When, in 2024, an opportunity arose to be poet in residence for the Elmet Trust, which included staying in Ted’s earliest childhood home in Mytholmroyd, where he lived till the age of eight, I jumped at the chance.
Arriving at #1 Aspinall Street, I felt the presence of a strong poetic energy. The home is a small, unassuming terrace house with a steep staircase, tastefully updated and decorated with pictures of Hughes and his family. However, strange things happened while I was there. A violent storm began the moment I picked up Birthday Letters. I heard clanging in the fireplace where Ted nearly died at age five. I heard what sounded like footsteps up the narrow staircase to where Ted’s older brother Gerald had slept. After returning home to the United States, what followed was the unexpected arrival of two Hughesian poems. After that, I began to deliberately watch, as Ted Hughes’ ideas and poems came forward and offered themselves to me. Somewhere around this point, an informal project took shape: to compose poems derived from or generated by my reading of Ted Hughes’ poems and, later, my reading of secondary material.
