Assia Wevill - Legacy

Legacy

Ted Hughes' volume of poetry Crow (1970) was dedicated to the memory of Assia and Shura. His poem "Folktale" deals with his relation to Assia:

She wanted the silent heraldry

Of the purple beach by the noble wall.

He wanted Cabala the ghetto demon

With its polythene bag full of ashes.

In 1989, Hughes published half a dozen poems he had written for Assia, which were hidden among the 240 poems in New Selected Poems. In "The Error." he wrote:

When her grave opened its ugly mouth

why didn't you just fly,

Why did you kneel down at the grave's edge

to be identified

accused and convicted?

In "The Descent," he wrote:

your own hands, stronger than your choked outcry,

Took your daughter from you. She was stripped from you,

The last raiment

Clinging round your neck, the sole remnant

Between you and the bed

In the underworld

In the feature film Sylvia, Assia Wevill was portrayed by Amira Casar.