Frieda Hughes
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Frieda Hughes (b. April 1, 1960, London) is an English poet and painter. She has published six children's books and an adult novel.
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[edit] Life
She is the daughter of poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. Hughes was almost three years old when her mother committed suicide, and has had to deal with much unwanted attention and artistic expectations. As a result, Hughes often reflects on the cult following of Sylvia Plath in her poetry, and has used her own poetry to criticise the film-makers and the "peanut eaters, entertained at [her] mother's death". In 2003, Hughes wrote 'My Mother,' a poem which attacked a BBC-backed film about her parents. In it she accuses the filmmakers of commodifying her mother's life and works.
After her father died of cancer in 1998, Hughes became engaged in a battle with his third wife, Carol, over the proceeds from his writing.
She now lives with her husband, Hungarian-born painter Lazlo Lukacs, in London, where she has lived since her father's death.
[edit] Career
Hughes graduated from St. Martin's School of Art, London, in 1988. She moved to Perth, Australia in 1988, and later settled in Wooroloo, a small town east of Perth, in 1991. In 1992 she took Australian citizenship. She has had numerous group and solo exhibitions in Australia, the U.S., and England, where her oil paintings received an award from the Royal Academy in London. Hughes is also the author and illustrator of children's books. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Paris Review, and London Magazine. Hughes' first full-length collection of poems, Wooroloo, was published by HarperCollins in 1998.
[edit] Bibliography
- Wooroloo, HarperCollins, 1998
- Stonepicker, Bloodaxe Books Ltd, 2001
- Waxworks, Bloodaxe Books Ltd, 2002/3
- Forty-Five, HarperCollins, 2006
