WHAT CAN QUALITATIVE RESEARCH CONTRIBUTE TO EMERGING EVIDENCE ON BASIC SKILLS PROVISION FOR OFFENDERS ON PROBATION SUPERVISION?

The horizons ring me like faggotsTilted and disparate, and always unstable.Touched by a match, they might warm me,And their fine lines singeThe air to orange (Plath, 1977).I first read Sylvia Plath’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ almost twenty years ago, when I taught it as part of a poetry anthology. I am a keen walker, and I have often repeated these lines to myself when out walking, to encourage myself over particularly difficult terrain. At times, I have wondered why Sylvia Plath, an American, had written a poem entitled ‘Wuthering Heights’. It was only this year, when I read Sylvia Plath’s Letters Home (Plath, 1999) and Elaine Feinstein’s biography (Feinstein, 2001) of Plath’s husband Ted Hughes, that I realized that Ted Hughes’ family lived near Wuthering Heights. In short, to enrich my understanding of the poem, I needed biographical detail.