Write On!’s Eithne Cullen interviews Jenny Mitchell

I first met Jenny when I attended of one of her workshops, having been drawn by Her Lost Language, Map Of A Plantation and Resurrection Of A Black Man, collections that have won multiple awards. She is outspoken; so, unsurprisingly, her workshops challenged. Not only did we begin writing almost from the start, but we were also invited to unpick the meaning behind words and ideas we take for granted. As a poet who is all about the business of making words matter, I felt she was the perfect candidate to help us explore our issue theme of ‘Difference’. Jenny is the Inaugural Poet-in-the-Community at the British Library, so it made sense to start with how writing can help us bridge the gaps between us.

“Poetry isn’t just about beautiful phrases. It’s about sharing our emotions, our humanity and our history. I facilitate workshops on poetry and freedom because I think part of what happens with class is that we get locked into a certain mindset where we’re in opposition to the people we should be in solidarity with.”

Jenny’s work is often related to the issues around Transatlantic enslavement and she uses her own poetry to invite a response: “People of all sorts come up to me and are moved to talk to me about their own families.”

Unsurprisingly, to her, poetry is connected to bringing people together in groups and she sees the forced manual labour associated with enslavement, as something that has held humanity – the ultimate group – back from the progress we should have made. I sense the underlying anger in her tone and wonder whether this is expressed in her poetic voice?

“Anger is such a heavy word and might need to be unpicked when looking at the history of enslavement.”

Forensically, Jenny goes on to wonder how the word shuts people out. But then adds a slightly different dynamic with: “It’s not the same as being cross.”

We want our readers to be challenged and hear different voices to those they might be used to. Though sometimes these voices can make us feel uncomfortable, it’s vital we hear them. It’s the only way dialogue can be created. To me, it was clear right from the start of our conversation, that Jenny wields her powerful words to great effect. As if to illustrate the point – and as an English teacher – I found her description of her latest collection, The Bronte Girl, challenging and fascinating in equal measure.

Jane Eyre is her starting point. Her focus, though, is not on Jane, the novel’s title character. Instead, she’s offering us the perspective of Bertha Rochester, who is sometimes referred to as the ‘mad woman in the attic.’ Jenny is scathing in her assessment of how Charlotte Bronte has relegated Jamaica to an island in her imagination.

“She’s not engaging with the fact that ‘there’ is a reality. Written nine years after the abolition of enslavement, Bronte is forming an idea of a Caribbean woman in her novel as someone who is mad, wild, angry and vampiric: a danger to everyone including her own family.”

It’s telling that Jenny refers to this as an anger linked to sexual promiscuity, when in fact it was the enslaved women who were raped. Giving Bertha a voice reminds us that people who were silent in history need to be allowed to speak. Her retelling is radical but necessary.

Having unpicked a work many see as ‘sacred’ to women’s empowerment, I ask Jenny about her workshops: ‘Sacred And Profane’ wondering what she thinks is ‘sacred.’ We start talking about the difference between being a spiritual person and a religious one. Jenny returns to the world of Jane Eyre and Lowood School, the religious institution contained in its pages embodying correction and cruelty. Jenny draws comparisons between this negative appropriation of the spiritual and Barry Unsworth’s novel Sacred Hunger, in which he presents a picture of slaves creating wealth for God’s Work on earth as a way of getting their reward in heaven. She presents this as naturally contrary to her own belief that we should all be as one and are all connected: “Working together to create something really beautiful on earth.”

She also sees Natural Rebels by Hilary Beckles, a history of enslaved women in Barbados, as a crucial book in terms of helping her to see the history – not just in terms of victimisation but also survival.

Talking about survival, we move on to her widely-quoted article, How Being A Girl Poet Saved My Life. A line that stood out for me is: “In choosing/wanting to spend my life writing, which many people see as an idle indulgence, I was literally stealing my body from the slave master and escaping to the freedom that lived in my own mind.”

Wanting to find out more about her poetic journey, I ask about her childhood, something she draws upon to illustrate the points she is making. She tells me how poetry made her life easier at school and shares: “[Poetry] brought me to the attention of the teachers because I was so determined to write. It fed into something positive and allowed me to do my exams and get to university. It was the one thing in my life that made a difference.”

This confidence enabled her to do well in exams and go on to University. She never saw writing as an indulgence.

We move onto her role with the British Library. There is excitement in her voice when she tells me of how she uses her ‘Poetry And Freedom’ workshops with the community hubs. She shares example around working with Afghan refugees and young people involved with gardening and nature and tells me how these poetry interventions are able to engage people who haven’t written since they were at school. It’s clear that empowerment and encouragement are at the heart of her work.

“I’m so interested in what we have to say about our own history. I don’t care as much about beautiful phrases as I do about identity and history and using our own life stories as fuel to get us to a different place.”

She’s also been working with the British Museum in a project that involves looking at history through poetry. Despite the fact much of this is emotive history, she reaffirms how vital it is to use rigorous research to get it right. She adds: “Writing isn’t an indulgence, it challenges. Poetry gives a voice to those who were denied one in the past.”

She goes on to speak about the power of reading and writing and how the ability to read and write (which was denied to some people) allows us to create worlds. Jenny tells me she, herself, gains confidence from writing. “When I’m lucky enough to be published, it shows me my thoughts have value. This gives me self worth.”

Absolutely able to identify with that, I come back to How Being A Girl Poet… and Jenny writing at the kitchen table. We talk about the importance of having somewhere to write and agree that libraries aren’t the quiet places they used to be. Jenny tells me, though, how we can still find quiet spaces if we look for them; one of her favourite spots for this being The South Bank.

Jenny has put the kitchen table and her other writing space to good use, winning multiple awards for her work. When I congratulate her, she tells me about how winning the Munster Prize took her to Cork and that she’s going back again soon. However, it’s important not to get lost in them:

“Awards, are important, but not too important; you still have to go on… People see them as recognition and they can lead to other things.”

When I ask her about tips for Write On! readers linked to prizes and awards, she tells me to look out for workshops, something I, as a Pen to Print workshop participant and workshop lead, wholeheartedly agree with! She also says to read lots of poets, citing websites ‘Poetry Unbound’ and ‘The Poetry Foundation’ as great starting places.

Her invocation to: “Submit! If it’s rejected, amend it, if your poem is worth sending off, it’s worth amending it to improve it,” is also great advice.

Finally, we come back to words of power and how we can make words matter. With that in mind I ask her about her favourite of her own poems and she tells me Black Men Should Wear Colour was written to challenge the drab colours she saw black men wearing. These first lines say it all:

I mean an orange coat,
sunlight dripping down the sleeves.
A yellow shirt to clash with bright blue trousers –
taking inspiration from the most translucent sea.
Pink leather shoes. Fuchsias might be best
to contrast with brown skin.

Taken from Her Lost Language debut collection, you can hear Jenny reading Black Men Should Wear Colour on our Write On! Audio podcast in October’s Listener Contribution https://bit.ly/48edU9w

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Issue 23 is out now. You will find it in libraries and other outlets. Alternatively all current and previous editions can be found on our magazines page here. 

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