Frieda Hughes on suicide, divorce and the pet magpie that gave her hope

’So, no I don’t want to kill myself. I want to live with love and passion… and owls and the occasional magpie that do go some way to answering great meaning’

Frieda Hughes and her pet magpie (The Independent)

In a moving interview with Independent TV, the poet and painter Frieda Hughes reveals how her adoption of a wild baby magpie became a lifeline as she struggled through the slow break-up of her marriage. She also discusses with Geordie Greig, the paper’s Editor-in-Chief, how she has navigated her life and career while bearing the constant label of being the daughter of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. In George: A Magpie Memoir she recounts a Born Free-like love affair with the wild bird she adopts in Wales, in its own way as challenging and humorous as the adoption of the African lion Elsa in George Adamson’s classic autobiography - as the bird eventually dominates her life, bringing chaos and destruction as well as great love.

In her most revealing TV interview Hughes, the author of eight books of poems and an acclaimed painter, talks about the suicides of her mother and brother. ‘’The death of my mother was preceded by their separation and so I lost my father first and then I lost my mother and then I got my father back. There was a sort of dissonance with everything, the chaos continued and started much earlier on.

“I have been asked at times if I felt like killing myself and the answer has not ever changed. As I am the only one left in my family one has to make as good a fist of it as possible. I have to take every scrap of being and make life as good as I can. My poems and whatever else I create are a contribution to the breadcrumbs of the trail of my life that I am leaving behind for others to follow. So when I see a George or animals like that who survive, I want to help them lead their best life. I want a life lived with passion and verve and energy.