It's the fire

Time for me to make an entry in my blog, so that I can mentally maintain the fiction that I keep a blog. The main thing that is going on with Plath and me is that I am pursuing the idea of starting a PhD based on her work. 

In 2007, I completed my Master's degree with a 26,000 word dissertation about Anne Sexton - a contemporary and acquaintance of Plath's. Like Plath's, Sexton's work has been regarded as of the confessional school because she made use of the events of her life to write her poetry. Like Plath, she committed suicide.

When I wrote my dissertation, I  picked Sexton almost at random. I'd initially wanted to research modern confessional writing - specifically writers such as John Diamond and Ruth Picardie who had written about their own serious illnesses. This was largely precipitated by the fact that I'd had cancer in 2001-2. I abandoned that idea of writing about it though, because it felt too close to home, and I would become depressed as I considered what  these writers were facing in their lives, and compared it to my own. One of the lecturers at Bath Spa remarked that I must be the only person ever to have studied a suicidal poet in an effort to cheer himself up. I kept a blog during my Masters year, and I actually wrote in it. It's here. The Masters dissertation itself is here. I'm proud of parts of it, and cringe a little at others. 

So I chose Sexton, and I grew to love her work. Both highly personal and highly poetic, I think. Anyway, the Masters was quite difficult, I think mainly because I didn't really know Sexton's work, so I had to get to know it and write about it at the same time. What I'm getting round to saying is that I have tried to approach things differently since I discovered a passion for Plath, and have spent he past year reading her work and biographies, and criticism of her poetry in order to be ready when the time came to start a PhD. I'm sure that it has been the right approach. Now, however, it is time to start thinking critically and academically. What is it about her work that makes it fascinating to me? I think the answer may lie in the title of this blog. It's the passion, the blood, the fire.

So I think that is where I need to concentrate my attention. I should probably also think about how on earth I'll pay the fees and find the time to do it. I am currently ignoring those problems - if I think about it too much, I'll start thinking realistically, and will talk myself out of it. Can't have that!