MITCHELL, Elma

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Nationality: Scottish. Born: Airdrie, Lanarkshire, 19 November 1919. Education: Somerville College, Oxford, B.A. (first-class honors) in English 1941; University College, London, diploma in librarianship. Career: Staff member, Library, British Broadcasting Company, London, 1941–43; library and information officer for various organizations, including British Employee's Confederation. Address: Tanlake Cottage, Buckland St. Mary, Chard, Somerset TA20 3QF, England.

Publications

Poetry

The Poor Man in the Flesh. Stockport, Cornwall, Peterloo Poets, 1976.

The Human Cage. Liskeard, Cornwall, Peterloo Poets, 1979.

Furnished Rooms. Liskeard, Cornwall, Peterloo Poets, 1983.

People Etcetera: Poems New and Selected. Liskeard, Cornwall, Peterloo Poets, 1987.

Recording: U.A. Fanthorpe and Elma Mitchell, Peterloo Poets, 1983.

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Critical Study: "Unauthorized Voices: U.A. Fanthorpe and Elma Mitchell" by Marilyn Hacker, in Grand Street (Denville, New Jersey), 8(4), summer 1989.

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In British Book News Shirley Toulson aptly described Elma Mitchell's strength as a poet in her having "the rare ability of making tough, compassionate and compelling verse out of the minutiae of domestic existence." Whether writing about childbirth, embroidery, mining coal, or turning out mattresses, Mitchell addresses the daily, the quotidian, the rituals of ordinary existence with a keen eye and an ear sensitive to sound and rhythm. But her relationship to the rites of ordinary life is often a troubled one, in "Thoughts after Ruskin," for example, puncturing Ruskin's ideal of women as reminding him of lilies and roses: "Me they remind rather of blood and soap / Armed with a warm rag, assaulting noses, / Ears, neck, mouth and all the secret places." In the poem "Hanging Out the Wash" the most ordinary of weekly rituals becomes imbued with vague threats, the adjectives and verbs recasting laundry as a victim of the elements:

The teeth of wooden and plastic pegs hold down Our woollies to be raped by a screaming north-easter. The sun assaults their colouring: a shirt Is crucified in ice: knickers distended, pregnant.

Both "Hanging Out the Wash" and "Late Fall" demonstrate Mitchell's mixed attitude toward Christianity, evident in the latter poem by the speaker's lax attitude toward the butterflies in her garden. When a butterfly lands on her hand, she remarks,

Some warmth or texture or suspected sap Inveigled it into this possible trap.

Mitchell ends the poem with the line "There is no god walking in this garden." In the poem "The Crucifixion will not take place," from People Etcetera, Jesus gives a press conference, while other poems reinterpret the Gospel According to John.

Two major themes dominate Mitchell's work: an attention to the household economy managed largely by women, and the Scottish rural landscape, which is closely observed. Her rhythmic, often iambic, careful lines are inflected by colloquialisms ("wamble," "bollop," "shaggies," "maunders") and a shifting point of view. In "Shepherd at Work," for example, we have three viewpoints, those of the shepherd, the dog, and the sheep. But whether assuming the work of women or the natural world (sheep, trees, songbirds, cows, rain, moths) as her central subject, Mitchell has an edge and a wit that cohere with an expert poetic voice, one that pays particular attention to steady rhythms, alliteration, and assonance. This edge ultimately makes Mitchell, like the speaker in the poem "Disabilities" who celebrates "the romp of imperfect," a writer who composes while wearing "dark spectacles against a rose-coloured sun."

Finally, as Mitchell warns readers in "This Poem," she knows as well as any poet that "words / Can seriously affect your heart."

—Sarah Sloane