Sylvia Plath’s Resting Place

For Sylvia – 27^th October 1932 to 11^th February 1963

I’ve visited Sylvia Plath’s resting place on a number of occasions and often noticed pens and pencils placed on her headstone. Like offerings to the immortal spirit so that another life can continue beyond this one. 

I remember lying down on my side to get a photos of the headstone from a quirky angle and a voice behind me in a strong Yorkshire accent said, “If you lie there any longer they’ll shovel some soil on you!” We laughed and nodded then moved on. 

The poem below simply reflects my thoughts and feelings on my regular visits to Heptonstall.

Pen's Atop

Visitors cannot see your face, just an edifice

To feel your presence beneath our feet, the soil, the turf, a hilltop cemetery to rest in ‘peace’

To reach the wuthering height I have wandered the cobbled, banked streets

Passing time-capsuled houses and yesteryear shops

The monolith is a magnet for the searching ones, the reverential ones to pay obeisance

All pulled in and drawn in like a black hole swallowing light

We willingly trudge and traipse to the site and become our senses

To offer condolences and search for insight

And grow beyond what we are now, to turn into something new.

Heads swirl, dizziness not uncommon, silent photographs taken to relive the scene, revive the moment

Pens and pencils adorn the headstone top, as if in the hope you will rise and use them to set down new verse

And add to your canon, expand your oeuvre at night when no one is watching, silently writing

As the crows maintain a respectful distance, the hawks fly high, gliding, observing.

Ted Hughes and Lumb Bank Reflections

On Ted, Assia and Shura

I learned recently of the final resting place of Ted Hughes' lover Assia Wevill and their daughter Alexandra Tatiana Elise (known as Shura). After my wanderings, I wrote a poem to crystallise and preserve my thoughts, which is at the end of this blog. 

I visited the area around Heptonstall and Ted's house he bought in the late 60s, Lumb Bank, now a writer's retreat, pictured below from the public footpath leading down into the Calder Valley. 

After the filicide/suicide of Assia and Shura at their London home in Okeover Manor, Clapham Common, Ted cremated their remains rather than carrying out Assia's earlier request for burial. It has only recently come to light where the ashes have been laid to rest. I travelled to the area, where the sycamores grow and absorbed the atmosphere and feeling of the valley. 

This seemed to be the right kind of place to close a chapter and bury the past away from prying eyes. Although there is no memorial spot, I believe Ted acted in good faith considering the pressures he had been under to spill the beans on his relationships. But a secret, or private, resting place, known but to himself, could be seen as an act of dignity and respect rather than a way of hiding any perceived controversy or hullabaloo. After all, Sylvia's headstone has been vandalised a number of times, fuelling more division than harmony. 

From this we can see a secluded place of rest was the best option to calm the public and private commotion. After this Ted went on to marry and continued to write. Maybe the burying of the ashes was not only a symbolic gesture, but the only avenue open to him in order to move on and develop his life and his talent. 

On Assia and Shura Wevill

In the copse no corpses here where both you rest

Skin so scorched it has become the land

Bones as powdered as lava sand

Descended to the underworld by a burdened hand

Hurriedly but thoughtfully as secretly as dreamers fly

Hidden proudly away from those that may pry

You now play where sycamores sky-scrape

Dance with their keys on the summer breeze

Huddled together, daughter and mother, in the winter freeze

Lumb’s shadow reaches out to touch the remnant memories of the valley

Where lives given were extracted too soon from their birth

Into the ground, into the seasoned earth.