About Helen Sargeant
I am a visual artist, mother of two children aged 12 and 4, and co-founder of the MeWe arts collective. I intend to use this site to explore how my personal experiences as a mother informs my arts practice. To reflect upon the maternal in relationship to memory, loss, and mental health in particu…Read more
Website: http://helensargeant.co.uk
2 Responses to “Mummyfication”
Frances Earnshaw
His words are so perfect… “Now we’re stuck together, arn’t we?”
Your phrase “I am the Birthday present”… sets off a whole Sylvia Plath train of thought.
Helen Sargeant
I thought it was fascinating because we are stuck together, forever bound to our children, always mother’s. There is no escape from this role, only in death. I love Sylvia Plaths poetry. Her words are so perfect they speak so clearly about the experiences of being a mother, of being depressed.
She is so present here, in this fictitious maternal space and in this place we live, her bones lying in the grave yard up in Heptonstall, her flesh a part of the earth of this valley. Her body her voice herself is here.
I’ve dug out my copy of Ariel, and re-read the emotionally haunting “A Birthday Present”, this passage is from the last four lines of the poem.
Sylvia Plath, The Birthday Present, Ariel, first published in 1965 by Faber and Faber Ltd
The poem doubles as a suicide note. Written in early October of 1962, three weeks before her thirtieth birthday and four months before her suicide. She died on the 11th February 1963.