By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Octobers and birthdays loom large in Sylvia Plath’s work, which perhaps isn’t surprising since she was born in October (27 October 1932 – which, it just so happens, was the day Dylan Thomas turned 18 years old). As well as writing ‘Poppies in October’ and ‘Poem for a Birthday’, Sylvia Plath also wrote ‘Ariel’, which came out of both her birthday and the last October she was alive on earth: she wrote ‘Ariel’ on 27 October 1962, her 30th birthday.