Monday 7 October 2024
Sylvia Plath: The West Yorkshire Poems
Speaker: Dr. Sarah Corbett
The Lit and Sci started its 2024/5 programme with an evening featuring the West Yorkshire poems written by Sylvia Plath. The Waterfront Room in the Town Hall was packed with enthusiasts of Sylvia Plath's work, newbies who have a thirst for all things literary, and fans of Sarah Corbett who admire her literary expertise and hard work in keeping Plath's canon alive.
It is that close association with Plath and her works which marks Sarah out as a true poets' poet. Many in the audience remembered the 2022 Sylvia Plath Festival in Hebden Bridge, on the occasion of Plath's 90th, which Sarah ran and hosted.
We were lucky enough to listen to readings from Sarah's book called After Sylvia, which was launched at that festival. It is an anthology of new writing celebrating the work and legacy of Plath, edited by Sarah Corbett and Ian Humphreys. We heard some poems from that book that were written for After Sylvia competitions. The successful ones, we were told, often incorporate Plathian Poetics, which the judges of the competitions define as the method of revealing the writer's inner world in response to the outer world, for example a place or a landscape. A talent that made Plath such a world-famous poet.
One of the Plath's West Yorkshire poems that Sarah read to us, Hardcastle Crags, is a prime example of Plathian Poetics. Sarah Corbett explained how significant this poem is in showing how Plath conjured up the spirit of the Crags, and surrounding landscape, so vividly that a reader could almost step inside the mind of the poet and feel what was going on in her life at that moment. Sarah managed all of this within the strict confines of the publisher's legal requirement that only brief snatches of the poem(s) could be displayed on the screen. With Sarah's help, we certainly got the taste for that poem's meaning.
We were then treated to several poems written by Sarah, which were largely influenced by Plath's life and works. She read these mainly from her collection of poems entitled, A Perfect Mirror (2018, Liverpool University Press). Notable among these was the poem, Halfway Back in which the poet is walking on the hills thinking about her life, so far. It certainly stands on its own as a powerful piece, and it was also easy for us to see how it was underscored by Plathian Poetics, since Sarah had prepared us so well to spot them.
Finally, Sarah presented a video showing young girls walking home at night to a mother's voiceover who, as the director wrote later, 'wants to protect her daughter but at the same time wanting to let her go.'
This poem When it feels hot, that rage against me, by Rebecca Goss was the prize winner at the Sylvia Plath Literary Festival in 2022. The film was subsequently made, for The Poetry Society, by Helmie Stil, a Dutch director based in the UK, to accompany this very evocative, Plath inspired, poem.
As an example of Sarah's dedication to the cause, she signposted a Poetry and High Tea Party which she is organising on October 27th for what would have been Sylvia's 92nd birthday (book on: Sell Tickets Create Events and Discover Experiences – Universe).
When the questions were finished, and the applause subsided, the audience left with confirmation of their love of Plath's works and/or inspired to find our more. All thanks to Sarah for this stimulating start to our season.
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Many thanks to Roger Gill for this report
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