BBC film on Plath inspires biting verse by daughter
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LONDON — The daughter of poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes has written an angry poem to protest the British Broadcasting Corp.’s decision to make a film about her family, believing it will be a voyeuristic retelling of her mother’s suicide in a gas oven.
Frieda Hughes’ 48-line poem, titled “My Mother,” will appear in the next issue of Tatler magazine. It criticizes both the makers and the potential audience of “Ted and Sylvia,” which is in production starring Gwyneth Paltrow as the tortured Plath and Daniel Craig as Hughes, who later became Britain’s poet laureate. The poem reads in part:
Now they want to make a film
For anyone lacking the ability
To imagine the body, head in
oven
Orphaning children.
Hughes, 42, the literary executor of her mother’s estate, has banned the BBC from using Plath’s poetry in the film.
The BBC denies it has acted with insensitivity and says the film doesn’t focus closely on Plath’s suicide. “Ted and Sylvia” is due out this fall.
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