Academia

by Jenny Mitchell, with above image by Chad McCail

This is not a campus for the poor. The posh,
in drab designer clothes, labels on the outside –
wealth flapping in the sun. A coddled generation,
prepared to have it all, held up as leaders
of the world, when I hail from a council flat –
the first child in my family to ever sit exams.

The rich must sense I do not know my arse
from elbow – how to cook a bechamel.
Is it the same as a white sauce? Black girl
begins to hide her voice – How now brown cow?
Call me Eliza Doolittle. Who knows about
the rain in Spain? I’ve never been abroard.

Debt is accrued by lounging in a coffee shop –
scones filled with cream and jam, hot chocolate
poured up to the brim. I’m awed by silver spoons
between thin lips. The upper one is always stiff.
Money sharpens vowels – a cut-glass voice,
words I long to speak trapped down my throat.

First published by Poetry Wales.

The poetry world hates poor poets. Discuss if you’ve ever been told your poem has been accepted for publication (hurrah!) but there’s no fee (how do I afford the time to write more poems and pay the rent?). Does your publisher receive the majority share of any, often-paltry, royalties but refuse to buy three bottles of wine for a launch party? Discuss further if you’ve been asked to pay £10 to go to a poetry reading, or £14 to enter a poetry competition. The latter is not mandatory but without a win or two, a poet with a so-so publisher may go unnoticed. In other words, competitions are a way up if you’re ambitious.

Well, I hear an imaginary reader say, get a better publisher. Good idea, but have you noticed the field is crowded with Very Young poets who get to be published by Very Big publishers with their first joined-up collection? I wonder how many of these lucky poets have an academic background, or parents who are poets/writers? In other words, is the Old Boys’ Network alive and kicking in the poetry world? What does this mean in terms of poetic originality? Why would you write poetry that challenges the status quo if it’s working for you? Following on, do we carry inherited, internalised ideas around money?

If your family was exploited by the rich does this fill you with fear about poverty in the future? Could this lead you to do the Sensible Thing and get a Proper Job which, as many of us know, means there’s very little time/headspace for writing anything at all, much less for processing/learning/digging deep until you reach your power as a poet. It sounds gloomy. I can offer ideas, but you’ll have to pay me first.

Coda: After finishing the above Poetry Wales were kind enough to offer me some extra money to set out my ideas so here goes: Could every poetry competition offer ten free submissions, with no proof needed? I know some do already but if it was standard would it be an incentive for people on limited budgets to seek out competitions they might have dismissed as too expensive?

Zoom events are often free but could live events offer a number of free places for all open miccers and a few audience members? Also, if events ended earlier more people might be prepared to walk to and from them, therefore saving on transportation costs. This only seems petty if you’re earning a fairly decent wage.

The bigger publishers could actively scout for new poets in places like libraries by offering regular workshops. Also, every publisher worth its salt could offer at least one paid mentorship a year to a promising poet who identifies as working class. The poet would not have to edit or judge but just write and be given the enormous confidence boost of regular feedback.

Finally, might there be deep, internal, emotional work on self-worth and value that has to be done by poets in order to shift blocks around money?

This article is republished from On Value, Pay and Problems of Capitalism: Poets Talk About the Challenge of Economic Stress, in Poetry Wales, issue 59:1

After Auden

by Jenny Mitchell

About suffering they were never wrong,
the slave masters: how hard they whipped
until the humans, trapped, were made to kneel;
how it all takes place hidden in the Caribbean
whilst Great Britain – rolling hills, dappled fields
placed in front of dread machines – calls itself enlightened,
the revered dead carved in stone placed in city squares
where those descended from the once-enslaved
are forced to do the service jobs, children trapped
in failing schools, piled on a heap of unemployed.
Where dogs in Parliament go on with their doggy lives,
scratching their arses with what should be a helping hand.

On Question Time, for instance, how they turn away
quite leisurely from disasters of their own making – foodbanks
emptied out. A refugee has heard the splash, forsaken cry
behind him, hardly daring to look back. As the sun sets
in blue water ambitious blacks and browns pull up the ladder.
No one sees the people falling from an island
sailing calmly on before it sinks.

Levelling Up

by Jenny Mitchell, with image by Martin Gollan

They will not show this on the evening news –
our mother kneeling down at Number Ten –
a place of work and routine bacchanals –
to scrub red wine stains from the office carpet.
As vomit hits the wall above her head,
the PM wipes his chin, glass held in the air.

Spit flies out of his mouth, pollutes the air,
with yet another garbled toast to A new
day – just like the old, him standing at the head,
to help his chosen people keep control. Ten
men and women dance around the carpet,
close to mother’s arm, to cheer the bacchanal.

The PM sees her then, mouths Bacchanal,
shouting that A cleaner’s head is full of air!
He explains the word, feet spread on the carpet,
followed by You’ve missed a spot, old girl. New
crates of wine are plonked onto the table, ten
bottles still with dregs, music coming to a head.

Our PM starts a waddling dance, nods his head,
wine spilling from the glass to toast the bacchanal
as he sings out of tune The Winner Takes It All, ten
times, louder-still as Abba fades into the fetid air.
Mother tries to crawl away but cat-calls are renewed
for her to polish shoes, kneeling on the carpet.

The PM joins in with this call, offers her ten
pounds to lick his leather clean. He shouts The carpet
has to be made new, aims a kick close to her head,
falling in a heap, demanding to be helped. The air
is filled with threats they won’t show on the news,
even when we know about the many bacchanals.

Ten people and the PM break the law – a bacchanal
for the law-makers, sore-headed the next day, air
rank with sick still on a carpet mother must renew.

Here's the link to How Being a Girl Poet Saved My Life, an extract from an article by Jenny Mitchell, first commissioned and published by Poetry Wales.

And you can hear Jenny reading a poem from her latest award-winning book, Map of a Plantation, in a short and very moving film here.

Black Rapunzel

by Jenny Mitchell

Family gathers in these plaits,
each parting like a grave
for people forced to work
the cane, colour of my scalp,
sun beating on their crowns.

I’ll twist the strands into a rope,
de-colonising hair, a diaspora
wending back to help
the ones in chains
escape the transatlantic.

Black Rapunzel, I’ll uncoil my locks
in prison yards, urge those on SUS
or sectioned, deep ancestor
voices trapped in too-loose plaits,
to shimmy over walls,

hide beneath my headwrap,
floral length of Africa before the trade.
I’ll carry them to safety,
woven in my braids. We’ll grieve
till loss flies out, unbound at last.

The Burden of Ownership

by Jenny Mitchell

He measures cost in body parts. A head pays
for a month of food; two eyes a week of drink.
Christmas adds a throat. Carved out with care
the neck still holds a yoke if the chin is firm
weight evenly proportioned.

Four breasts pay for his wife's new car, a mad
extravagance she must not think will be the norm.
Her furs demand a score of navels.
One manly chest is paid for every house –
he only wants the very best.

A waist is worth the price of land: an acre for two wombs.
Twelve manhoods buy a gushing stream
to serve his many fields. A sack of feet placed
in a bank account, maintains his balance
and the boast: he's always in the black.

Listen to Jenny reading the poem