Sylvia Plath on Writing

lluminating, incisive and entertaining insights into the writing life from one of our most renowned authors.

Sylvia Plath always knew that she wanted to be a writer and she always wrote. She interrogated, both lightly and acutely, what the practice of writing means: how to see afresh whether you’re looking at a thistle or an umbrella; the what it is to want so much to ‘live, love and say it well in good sentences …’, and how she doesn’t think poems ‘should be all that chaste’ but is unwilling to write one that includes mention of a toothbrush.

The poet Maura Dooley has brought together excerpts from across Plath’s journals, letters, poems and prose as one poet mapping their journey through another poet’s observations and reflections on the writing life.