What a voice Plath had – stern yet somehow musical, long-vowelled, bear-like: Radio 4’s My Sylvia Plath reviewed

Can you ever truly know a poet? The question arises every time one publishes a collection that looks vaguely confessional. Is it real, we ask, or is it all persona? My Sylvia Plath, an Archive on 4 programme to mark the 60th anniversary of Plath’s death this month, presupposes that poets are to some degree unreachable. The ‘My’ belongs to Emily Berry, a contemporary poet, who knows that her Plath is different from another’s, is different from Plath’s own Plath, and so on. 

Unexpectedly, given the emphasis on many Plaths and the gap between a writer and their verse, the framework of the programme is intensely personal. It comes as a shock when Berry reveals, some way in, that her own mother committed suicide when she was seven. It may be dangerous to read too much of a poet’s life into their work, but Berry’s use of Plath as inspiration for her own poetry naturally acquires deeper resonance once the revelation is made.