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He was tall and charismatic when Liz Hicklin fell in love with young poet Ted Hughes, the future poet laureate, in the early 1950s in the English city of Cambridge.
She was a trainee nurse at a hospital, Hughes was studying at Cambridge University. They were lovers for 18 months, and would write poetry together in the pub. They spoke of marriage.
But it was not to be. After finishing her studies, Hicklin went to the United States and Canada to work and visit relatives, but she and Hughes continued writing to each other.
When she heard that Hughes had married American poet Sylvia Plath – by then she had come to Australia with a friend – Hicklin was so upset, she didn’t get out of bed for three days.
Today, Hicklin, aged 95 and living in the Melbourne bayside suburb of Mornington, remembers Hughes with affection.
Hicklin will talk about Hughes and other aspects of her life in her one-woman show, called 95 and Still Alive, on June 27 at the Glen Eira Storytelling Festival.
Her career as a comedian and raconteuse began three years ago.
In 2023, Hicklin was in the audience at the Clunes Booktown Festival at an event discussing ageing, hosted by ABC presenter and author Jacinta Parsons.
Parsons says Hicklin stood up, told the crowd she was 92, advised them “get on with your life”, and declared she would perform in a slam poetry competition that night – which Hicklin went on to win.
Hicklin warned the crowd that she would use a four-letter word at the poetry competition. “I mouthed to her, ‘what word?’,” Parsons says. “And she mouthed back, ‘f—’.
“That’s when we became friends,” Parsons adds. “I saw the cheeky fun-ness in her, a kindred spirit.
“I was like, ‘that is a fun person, someone I want to be friends with’.”
Parsons interviewed Hicklin for one of her books, A Wisdom of Age, about everyday women and their wisdom, and Parsons is now Hicklin’s manager.
“I booked her for her first comedy show at Local Laughs at The Local Taphouse in St Kilda alongside comedians Anthony ‘Lehmo’ Lehmann and Claire Hooper,” Parsons says.
Hicklin has since appeared in panels and performed at venues including the Sydney Opera House and the Sorrento Writers’ Festival. She is often introduced as “the oldest sit-down, stand-up comedian in the world”.
Wearing multicoloured jackets, Hicklin makes a bright splash on a stage and tells yarns from a full life.
As she was growing up in Manchester, her father, Alfred, sent her to elocution lessons and encouraged her to recite children’s poems.
During World War II, she was evacuated due to Nazi bombing raids.
As an adult, after working as a nurse in North America and Australia, Hicklin met her future husband, Bill, in Melbourne.
They had three children and ran a lottery and pet shop in Caulfield, and later a reproduction doll-making shop in Brighton.
In 2017, Hicklin sold Hughes’ letters to the British Library for £10,000 ($19,000), and she likes that her maiden name, Grattidge, is now found in the same institution as Mozart’s scores and Shakespeare’s handwritten notes.
Her next one-woman show will be boldly named Sylvia Plath Stole My Boyfriend.
Rather than moping about ageing, Hicklin likes to recite from a poem she wrote:
I’m still quite as feisty as 40, I refuse to submit to my age.
I’d much prefer to be naughty than wise and smug as a sage.
Perchance a lover came calling with chocolates, perfume, flowers.
Could I possibly come to the party and raise my seductive powers?
The stage performances energise her, she says.
“You have to have a purpose, a plan,” she explains. “It’s to keep my brain going.”
Her son, Boyd, says: “My mum’s a force of nature. She’s got more energy in her 90s than I have in my 50s, which is kind of embarrassing.
“She’s inspiring and challenging in equal measure, but that’s the mother-son relationship dynamic. I love her to bits.”
storytellingfestival.com.au
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