Glimpsing The Ghostly Archives

I'm  so glad I live in the age of SatNav. There was a time when taking a trip to anywhere was a hellish experience for me. Amongst many navigating disasters, I remember searching for the venue of a job interview in Bristol in 1999, and getting so lost I had to phone my wife from my new mobile phone and have her direct me. 

Maps - I just don't understand how they work.

Likewise, some years ago I arranged to meet a friend for coffee in Bath and another group of friends for lunch, and was hopelessly late for both as I took wrong-turns on a route I'd travelled many times before. All the while, as I searched for these places, I'd internally berate myself for such idiocy. A sign of manliness in our society  is, it seems, to be able to talk about the route you took to arrive at a particular place. "Did you take the A472, or the back roads?", people will ask. I don't know!! 

Thanks to SatNav, I had no such trouble when I needed to get from the school at which I teach in Weston-super-Mare to Plymouth University in time for the preview recitation of These Ghostly Archives 5. It's just a case of inputting the correct postcode and doing as you're told. I can do that.

As soon as my interest in Plath began in earnest, I took to Googling her name regularly, in order to discover any events that may be of interest. From one of these I found that Peter K. Steinberg and Gail Crowther were to present a preview of their paper in Plymouth on March 20th. I immediately decided that I would be there. On the day, I left school immediately and the SatNav told me I'd be in good time to arrive about thirty minutes early. As I drove however, my elderly Vauxhall protested a little and so I drove at 55-60 most of the way. The ETA on the SatNav crept up steadily and I in fact arrived at around ten to six. With the talk due to begin at six, I realised that no on-campus parking was available. By the time I'd parked, walked for a while in the wrong direction and looked for the building, I was about five or ten minutes late. 

Climbing the stairs to the room on the seventh floor of the building, I entered the room as the introductory speaker was well under way, and sat down at the back of the room,

The Rolle Building - Plymouth University

attempting to control my breathing from the exertion of climbing the stairs (I hate lifts - perhaps because my brothers and I were trapped in one in Paris when I was thirteen), and surreptitiously taking a puff on my inhaler.

I had read the revelations that Peter and Gail had already made from their discoveries from various Plath archives, published in the online interdisciplinary journal Plath Profiles, and was therefore ready to be astonished by their further revelations on this day. The paper has not yet been published, so it would be wrong of me to reveal any of its contents here, but I'm sure it's okay to say that the revelations that were presented surpassed my expectations and left me amazed that such things were still discoverable from archives and locations which have been mined by many for many years.

An unexpected pleasure was that Elizabeth Sigmund, a friend of Sylvia Plath from her time in North Tawton and co-dedicatee of The Bell Jar, was in attendance, and spoke at length about her personal relationship with Plath and Ted Hughes. Elizabeth also brought Sylvia Plath's heavily annotated copy of a book of - I think - Dylan Thomas's poems. 

Elizabeth's dedication in The Bell Jar

We broke for drinks and returned for questions. I am very aware that Sylvia Plath's suicide is for some a part of the reason for their interest in her. However , I was very surprised at the extent to which some of the questions dwelt on this. Indeed, far from asking questions of the panel about the paper that had presented, some simply made statements of their own opinions about the supposed selfishness of suicide, which I felt was discourteous to the panel and irrelevant to the reasons for which I had supposed we were all there. Surely a gathering such as this, fifty years after her Plath's death, was taking place because of the poetry and prose she had written and - in my supposition at least - what it had meant to each us; and was supposed to be more than a simple forum for people to attempt to impose their views about her final act. Despite feeling a little reticent - shy if I'm to be honest - I wanted to ask a question and felt I should. I asked Gail about the correspondence regarding the biography Bitter Fame she had seen in the archives at Smith College, which she had mentioned in These Ghostly Archives 4 and I received a fascinating and illuminating answer.

It was amazing to hear about the things Peter and Gail had done and seen, and I was flattered that Peter complimented my question via Twitter the next day. It was also encouraging that Gail, like me, has a fear of flying, and yet has visited Smith College to work on the Plath archives. I have since been looking into the prices of cabins on the Queen Mary - the only liner which now makes trips to the States.

I would have loved to have stayed for a while to talk to people after the event, but I had a long trip in a potentially unreliable car to look forward to, so I left as soon as the questions were done. However, I was delighted to attend and spend a few hours in the company of people who understand what it is to be  so fascinated with a single poet, and I'm looking forward to reading the full paper when it's published in the summer.