Introduction to Jenny Mitchell’s Poetry

Poetry with Jenny Mitchell

In this course, poet and poetry workshop facilitator Jenny Mitchell analyses four of her poems, which centre around legacies of British transatlantic enslavement and its impact on Black family dynamics. In the first module, we introduce her poetry collections, creative process, and research into transatlantic slavery. In the second, third, fourth and fifth modules, we analyse her poems ‘Black Men Should Wear Colour’, ‘Bending Down to Worship’, ‘Black Rapunzel’ and ‘The Day Mr Zephaniah Died’, respectively, while discussing her writing process and research.

Introduction to Jenny Mitchell’s Poetry

In this module, Jenny Mitchell introduces her poetry, focusing on: (i) her poetry collections, Her Lost Language (2019), Map of a Plantation (2021), and Resurrection of a Black Man (2022); (ii) her goal to reframe the history of enslavement as a complicated history of Black people fighting for freedom, stretching back hundreds of years; (iii) poetry that inspires her, such as Robert Browning’s My Last Duchess (1842); and (iv) her research into transatlantic slavery.