For the Love of Poetry and Nature: Ariel by Sylvia Plath

Really, these summer days, I only want to be outdoors, reading transcendent poetry in awe inspiring places. 

So this made me happy. It’s my favourite poem of the moment.

Click here to watch my reading of ‘Ariel’ by Sylvia Plath on You Tube.

Recently, when I was mining the depths of cobwebbed shelves in a second-hand bookshop, I rediscovered the work of Sylvia Plath. I almost didn't open the book. She was the token female poet on our syllabus at school, and I considered her something of cliché: tortured young writer who took her own life. 

I'm so glad I did open that book. Ariel is an extraordinary poem.

Sylvia Plath wrote Ariel on her birthday, in October 27th 1962. That was three months before her life ended by suicide. I like to think that it was the writing of this poem - describing a journey to freedom on her horse - that enabled another three months of life.