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A newly released poem written by Ted Hughes directly addresses the writer’s reaction to the suicide of his first wife, Sylvia Plath.

After securing permission from Hughes’ widow Carol, The New Statesman published the piece entitled Last Letter. British actor Jonathan Pryce reads from the poem in the BBC video embedded above.

Normally, Hughes’ process to “complete” the writing of a poem was to type the finalized version. Several draft versions of Last Letter were found in Hughes’ handwritten notebooks. The earliest draft of the poem is contained in a blue exercise book now owned by the British Library’s Ted Hughes archive.
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

This is a cautionary tale. Turn away now if you're squeamish.

Do you have one of those travel coffee mugs with a screw-on lid? I do, and I fill it as soon as I get up, with coffee and chocolate milk, and I drink my daily dose on and off for an hour or two. But with that dairy product in there, I don't like to leave the dregs sitting around too long. I wash the mug and the lid out with hot soapy water. I rinse and rinse until it's clean. Or so I thought.

I wiped the inner lip with a paper towel yesterday, because it looked as if some dried chocolate milk had gathered there. A bit of the towel slid under the inner ledge. It came back smudged. I crooked my finger, still covered with the paper towel, under the lip and circled it round. There was actually a deep crevice under there and---turn away now!----my finger came back covered with a half inch of sludge. Yeeech!

How could that have happened? How could I have been drinking toxic waste for some time now and not known? What kind of evil designer puts a hidden ledge into a coffee mug and then sleeps soundly at night?

I'm sitting here, trying to think how coffee sludge can be inspirational. How it could be a metaphor for all the gunk in our heads/hearts that we don't even know is slowing up our writing processes. But---and maybe this is the toxifying effect of drinking sludge for untold weeks now---I can't think of a thing that would make this a worthwhile lesson.

Sometimes, sludge is just sludge. Except that perhaps...and here's where I love being a writer...I'm already thinking that if I need a character to have an interesting occupation in one of my books, travel coffee mug designer wouldn't be too bad. Think of all the work generated by trying to make an attractive mug that will fit comfortably in multiple sizes of cupholders, that won't tip over, that will keep coffee hot all morning, that will appeal to those who walk and those who drive and those who take trains. Think of the conversations this designer mom/dad could have with main character as she/he brings home various test models. It's just the perfect bit of stage business that allows a writer to reveal character while moving the storyline along.

I love my own brain. I really do. It takes sludge and makes an idea out of it. Once upon a time, there was a girl who believed... Read the rest of this post

Normally, I don't get all horn-tooty about my book, Letters From Rapunzel, here at Read Write Believe. I figure you're big kids and can do the clicky thing if you want to find out more about it. But I found this yesterday, and I...well...REJOICED is not too strong a word:

"Being gifted is awesome in some very real ways, but it also majorly sucks in some very real ways. Holmes really, truly got it. She absolutely nailed it." --- Read more of this review by Katie, who admits to once being a girl much like Rapunzel.

Thank you so much, Katie of PixiePalace. I'd be honored to meet you one day.*

And while I've got the horn out, I'm also pleased to announce that Tina Wexler of International Creative Management is my new agent. Huzzah!


*Full disclosure: I saw Letters From Rapunzel on PixiePalace's book wishlist several months ago. So I mailed her a copy, because she sounded like a cool person. But we've never met, and I didn't ask her to review it.

I really like the Guardian's "Why I Write" series--it's short, sweet and they always choose interesting writers to interview. This month Sarah Kinson talks to Alan Garner about why (and how) he writes. I love this exchange:

• "How do you survive being alone in your work so much of the time? It's the other way around--how on earth do I put up with all the interruptions?"