Every ten years or so, the town of Slough in Berkshire
gets into a pique. Local resident, Ann Timperley, set the ball rolling recently
by requesting that Ted Hughes write a poem in praise of Slough, to counter Sir
John Betjeman's famous poem 'Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough'. The
campaign gained the backing of Slough MP, Fiona Mactaggart, and even the Queen
wrote to Mrs. Timperley to express her support. Hughes
declined, and as we all know now, he was very ill at the time. Some
professional pride may have been involved in Hughes' decision, since none of
these supplicants seemed to be aware that the Poet Laureate had already written
about Slough, in his award-winning 'Birthday Letters': 'I was sitting Youth
away in an office near Slough, Morning and evening between Slough and Holborn,
Hoarding wage to fund a leap to freedom' - i.e. Hughes was keen to get away
from even the proximity of Slough. I'll not hold this against him, as it's a
view shared by many people, of whom a great number live in Slough. Hughes was
famously reticent in discussing the death of his wife, the poet Sylvia Plath.
The story is already well known to us, through many biographies in recent
years, which have been for and against Hughes. Here, within the poetry of
'Birthday Letters', Hughes could fully express his mixed feelings concerning
his wife. Especially painful is 'The Tender Place', where Hughes wrote of the
scars caused by the electric shock therapy inflicted on Plath, during her
treatment for depression. In an ideal world, though, the story of this
controversial partnership would have been laid to rest long ago.
Kevin Mahoney
