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. Go home. Don\u2019t be ridiculous. You\u2019re 92.<\/p>\n
She got on the next ferry. <\/p>\n
This decision would prove to be a sliding doors moment. As Hicklin, now 95, says: \u201cI really should be knitting\u201d \u2013 but instead she debuts her first play at Melbourne fringe festival this October: Sylvia Plath Stole My Boyfriend<\/a>, about her romantic relationship with a young Ted Hughes.<\/p>\n 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<\/a>, 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\u2019s manager.<\/p>\n Hicklin and Hughes read poetry and wrote feverish letters to each other<\/p>\n When the three of us meet, we\u2019re surrounded by art and books in Hicklin\u2019s apartment in a residential care home on the Mornington Peninsula. Parsons buzzes in and out, making phone calls. In private, Hicklin says: \u201cJacinta\u2019s changed my life completely. I\u2019m living life again.\u201d Whenever Parsons sits down, the dynamic switches into a double act.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m going to talk about you while I\u2019m looking at your face,\u201d Parsons tells her, cupping Hicklin\u2019s cheek. \u201cLook \u2013 you\u2019re so anxious that you\u2019re turning on me like a dog.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re an academic and I\u2019m so run of the mill,\u201d Hicklin protests. It\u2019s a recurring theme, as if being self-educated later in life disqualifies her from being taken seriously.<\/p>\n While Parsons, as co-director, used Hicklin\u2019s wealth of writing to populate the play, Hicklin is \u201cused to being in control\u201d and worries that there\u2019s too much Plath. \u201cWho\u2019s the drawcard here, Sylvia or me?\u201d she wonders.<\/p>\n Hicklin never met Plath, her romantic rival. There\u2019s a hefty compendium of Plath\u2019s poetry sitting on her side table but she doesn\u2019t particularly rate it. She met Hughes, who served as the British poet laureate for 14 years, when studying nursing in Cambridge. They read poetry to each other in local pubs, writing feverish letters whenever apart.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was like I was blossoming, she says. \u201cI\u2019d get on the bus to Hebden Bridge and immediately feel different, as though they felt things more deeply in Yorkshire. It was his magic touch \u2013 that he touched many women with, as we learned.\u201d<\/p>\n Amid their romance Hicklin took the opportunity to travel (\u201ca woman\u2019s got to keep her options open\u201d) first to Canada, then Australia. \u201cI went around the world trying to recreate Ted Hugheses but they didn\u2019t match up,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n The pair kept writing to each other, with Hughes describing his own travels. \u201cHis whole life was trying to conjure up a living that would give him time to write,\u201d Hicklin says. \u201cOne idea was to run a boarding house. His uncle Walt ran a trouser factory, so there was that idea \u2026 and another was to be a mink farmer.\u201d<\/p>\n