I would like to write about the life of Sylvia Plath. She used her painful life experiences and struggles and turned it into art. I believe her poetry has the power to speak to all women, as it has for me, telling them that imperfections are normal. Her poetry also highlighted many struggles that the majority of women face in society, due to the misogyny and pressures by men and other women. I would therefore like to write about the life of Slyvia Plath to showcase how she turned her pain into art.

Sylvia Plath was an American Poet born in October 1932. She is well known for the unique style of her poetry and how her poetry style often resembled a stream of consciousness. Two of her most well- known poems are ‘Daddy’ and ‘Lady Lazarus’. Some of her poetry, including, most famously, ‘Munich Mannequins’ and ‘Morning Song’, explored the pressures of being a woman in her time. Her novel ‘The Bell Jar’ was published in 1963 and her poetry collection ‘Ariel’ was published in 1965, after her death.

Glow from a lighthouse

She was born,
A shimmer in the stars
And she shone onto the black sea
Like the glow from a lighthouse.

Where the waves wash against the sand,
She sat still
Watching the world drift away
from the perfect image of today.

She adored odd sounds;
Those broken notes that snap like leaky rooftops.
All before she loved a man;
Soft eyes, hard smile
And the words that strung them both together;
I do. I do. I do.

When her heart broke, she wrote.
Every stroke of pen pushed against paper
Like the water marking her face again and again and again.
Then came the sounds that woke her ‘mama, mama’.
And the disappointment
And the lies
And the imperfections
Like wild seas making digs in the sand.
And still she wrote;
Bell Jar then Ariel.
‘Daddy Daddy,
Mannequins are fake!
Cosmetics hurt.’

‘And I am not perfect.’

- Sarah Yeboah-Smith