What's New for Di Beddow
Summer 2025
I have neglected my website for a while, but with new projects now on the go, I am updating the site and also adding new material.
I am currently writing a chapter for a Cambridge University Press release in the New Directions series. This is on ‘Plath and Place’, surveying recent work and my own research on the poetic places that were so important to Sylvia Plath. Publication will probably be in 2027, as the editor is keen we reference the new collection of Plath’s poetry which will be published in April 2026.
Work continues on my non-fiction book, Our Place, where I am exploring the piece of land just outside Cambridge city centre, which Ted Hughes wrote about as the place of his courtship with Plath. I am grateful to Dr David Cooper who has been invaluable in moving forward the direction of my writing this book. David is a senior lecturer and the founding Co-Director of the Centre for Place Writing (with Rachel Lichtenstein) at Manchester Metropolitan University (https://www.mmu.ac.uk/about-us/faculties/arts-humanities/research/groups/centre-place-writing).
I have also been working with Pembroke College’s, Elemental Poetry Cambridge (https://elementalpoetrycambridge.org). The engaging workshops have encouraged me to return to my own poetry writing, of which I hope to share more here in the future.
Have a great summer and do contact me if you are interested in any of the work on the site.
Autumn/Winter 2023
In the Lent Term of this year at the English Faculty’s Benson Gallery, my exhibition “ ‘Our Place’ the Cambridge of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath “ enjoyed a steady flow of visitors with many of the Cambridge great and good writing nice things in the Visitor’s Book. Thank you to Laura Moss, the librarian and her team for being so welcoming to a non-Cambridge University graduate. The exhibition space is normally held for graduates, post-graduates and alumni of the university, but Laura felt that what the exhibition had to offer was worth a risk with this Cambridge townee!Summer/Autumn 2022
In April 2022 I graduated at Queen Mary University London. Dr Diane Beddow had submitted the thesis entitled ‘The Cambridge of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes’. I am now preparing papers for the Ted Hughes Conference at Huddersfield in September and the inaugural Sylvia Plath Conference at Hebden Bridge and Heptonstall in October. In Huddersfield I will be presenting on Hughes as Teacher and in Hebden Bridge I am joining Heather Clark and Dave Haslam to speak on ‘Plath’s Places’.
