After we visited the cemetery together, I knew my date would be my soulmate

Having put it off for a good while, she’d realised this was her last chance to book a course before the voucher expired, whereas I – at the tender age of 25 – was only eligible for a young person discount for another month. For both of us, it was a last chance moment.

My intended romantic detox went out the window when I entered the cottage on a Monday afternoon, and saw her sat on a sunken sofa in front of the fireplace, wearing a turtleneck and white trousers that were entirely unsuitable for the muddy environment. 

Too nervous to ask her name, I managed to glean a few tidbits – that we were working roughly in the same industry, her as a tech worker who’d escaped here from Silicon Valley, me as a UK-born technology journalist, both of us craving more of a creative release than our working lives allowed.

I texted my flatmate that same evening: ‘Met a beautiful woman on the poetry course who also lives in London and works in tech. She’s 33. Wish me luck.’ My friend sent back a joke about marriage, three years to the day before we actually got hitched.

Our first date was a purely accidental visit to Sylvia Plath’s grave – as Hughes’ wife and the other major poetry royalty in the area. Trying not to seem overly forward, I tried asking others to join, but no-one else bit.

So it was just the two of us who embarked on a misty walk through the cobbled streets of Hebden Bridge before breakfast the following morning and got to know each other in the ruins of a roofless, overgrown church near Plath’s tulip-covered headstone, awkwardly taking photos of each other’s feet over the graves. 

We walked back to the cottage together and agreed to trade some reading materials we’d brought along for the retreat – my book of Sappho’s fragments, translated by Anne Carson, for her copy of Jack Gilbert’s Collected Poems. 

I remember it being quiet, neither of us quite sure how we’d got out of London and arrived in the calm Yorkshire countryside, away from the adrenaline rush of back-to-back meetings, KPIs, and inbox admin. 

In that quiet, we noticed each other – which in turn, everyone else seemed to notice too, with several other attendees independently pointing out the budding chemistry. At first, she batted it off, dismissing the idea of dating someone eight years junior to her.

We texted a little that night, sending screenshots of our favourite passages, tucked up in adjacent rooms on the second floor.

We tentatively laid out plans to spend the two weeks together, with me staying at her house – at the time, the maximum length of time we could imagine either for a lockdown or uninterrupted time with someone we were still getting to know. That became two months, then another two months after that. 

I had a tearful, if tender, breakup with my flatmate as we both realised I wouldn’t be moving back in when everything had ‘blown over’.

She and I got married this past February, reading from our favourite poets – Sarah Howe and Nayyirah Waheed – for the vows. 

Growing that relationship amid an ongoing pandemic was difficult at times, but we found we were able to take on the hard days together as much as the easy ones, whether grappling with burnout, grieving lost relatives, or taking dreamy walks through the countryside.

Even now, she loves to bring tulips into the house, so we remember how accidentally, how perfectly, we met.