Liz Hicklin had missed the ferry that could change her life. Pelting rain had made the drive to the Sorrento terminal perilous. Sitting in the car park, watching the boat glide off, she chastised herself.
She got on the next ferry. This decision would prove to be a sliding doors moment. As Hicklin, now 95, says: “I really should be knitting” – but instead she debuts her first play at Melbourne fringe festival this October: Sylvia Plath Stole My Boyfriend, about her romantic relationship with a young Ted Hughes.
By getting to the Queenscliffe literary festival that day, Hicklin managed to track down the ABC radio presenter Jacinta Parsons. The pair had met fleetingly months before at Clunes booktown festival, where Parsons, author of A Question of Age and A Wisdom of Age, hosted a panel about ageing. Hicklin was a spirited audience member (later that day she won a poetry slam) and the two women started talking.
Upon being reunited in Queenscliffe, Parsons eventually became Hicklin’s manager. When the three of us meet, we’re surrounded by art and books in Hicklin’s apartment in a residential care home on the Mornington Peninsula. Parsons buzzes in and out, making phone calls.
In private, Hicklin says: “Jacinta’s changed my life completely. I’m living life again.” Whenever Parsons sits down, the dynamic switches into a double act. It’s a recurring theme, as if being self-educated later in life disqualifies her from being taken seriously.
While Parsons, as co-director, used Hicklin’s wealth of writing to populate the play, Hicklin is “used to being in control” and worries that there’s too much Plath. Hicklin never met Plath, her romantic rival. There’s a hefty compendium of Plath’s poetry sitting on her side table but she doesn’t particularly rate it.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
