Birthday Letters Birthday Letters Birthday Letters, published in 1998, is a collection of poetry by English poet and children's writer Ted Hughes. Released only months before Hughes's death, the collection won multiple prestigious literary awards. This collection of eighty-eight poems is widely considered to be Hughes's most explicit response to the suicide of his estranged wife Sylvia Plath in 1963, and to their widely discussed, politicized and "explosive" marriage. Until the publication of this book, 35 years after Plath's suicide, Hughes had said and published nearly nothing about his relationship and life with Plath. When it was discovered that he had infidelities
Grace Taylor (poet) Grace Taylor (poet) Grace Teuila Evelyn Taylor (born c.1984) is a New Zealand poet and performer. Taylor is of English and Samoan heritage. She was born in about 1984 in South Auckland and refers to herself as "Afakasi" which is a 1930s Samoan word for someone of mixed heritage. She has an MA in Youth Development from Auckland University of Technology. In 2013 Taylor published her first collection of poetry, "Afakasi Speaks." She has been published in literary journals including "Hawai'i Review". Taylor wrote and performed the play "My Own Darling", which has been performed in South Auckland and broadcast