Elma Mitchell

Elma Mitchell (November 19, 1919 – November 23, 2000) was a Scottish-born poet and translator based in Somerset, who published several well-received books of poetry in the 1970s and 1980s.

Elma Mitchell
Born	(1919-11-19)19 November 1919 Airdrie, Lanarkshire, Scotland
Died	23 November 2000(2000-11-23) (aged 81) Buckland, St Mary, Somerset, England
Nationality	British

Early life and education

Mitchell was born in Airdrie, North Lanarkshire.^[1] She attended Prior's Field School in Surrey, and won a scholarship to Somerville College, Oxford, where she gained a first in English in 1941.^[2] She went on to achieve a diploma in librarianship at the School of Librarianship, University College London.^[3]

Career

Mitchell worked as a librarian and information officer for the BBC during World War II (from 1941 to 1943).^[2][3] She moved to Buckland St Mary, Somerset, and worked as a freelance writer and translator; she also did some amateur archaeological work in South Cadbury.^[4] Some of her poems were published in New Statesman in the 1960s.^[4] Her "quirkily original" poem "Thoughts After Ruskin" was first published in 1967; it won awards and was included in several anthologies.^[3] She published several books of poetry in the 1970s and 1980s.^[1]

Many of Mitchell's poems have feminist themes of domestic work, body image, creative frustration, and bereavement.^[5][6][7] "Mitchell frequently alludes to the strength tapped from the life force of routine necessities and occupations, especially women's traditional occupations," noted Marilyn Hacker in 1997.^[8] "This is a woman who is very conscious of being a body with all that implies of delight and restriction," commented poet Herbert Lomas in 1988.^[9]

Mitchell died in 2000, at the age of 81, in Buckland St Mary, Somerset.^[3] Her poems continue to be included in anthologies, decades after her death.^[6][10][11]

Awards

• 1977 Cheltenham Festival Poetry Competition^[12]
• 1999 Cholmondeley Award^[13]

Works

• The Poor Man In The Flesh. Manchester: Harry Chambers/Peterloo Poets. 1976. ISBN 978-0-905291-04-8.^[8][14]
• The Human Cage. Manchester: Harry Chambers/Peterloo Poets. 1979. ISBN 978-0-905291-22-2.^[15]
• Furnished Rooms. Manchester: H. Chambers, Peterloo Poets. 1983. ISBN 978-0-905291-47-5.^[16]
• People Etcetera: Poems New & Selected. Manchester: Peterloo Poets. 1987. ISBN 978-0-905291-84-0.^[9][17]

Anthologies

• Maurice Lindsay; Lesley Duncan, eds. (2006). "The Crucifixion Will Not Take Place". The Edinburgh book of twentieth-century Scottish poetry. Edinburgh University Press. p. 241. ISBN 978-0-7486-2015-9. Elma Mitchell.
• U. A. Fanthorpe; Elma Mitchell; Charles Causley (1996). Penguin Modern Poets. Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-058754-8.^[12]
• Carolyn Kizer (1995). 100 Great Poems by Women. Ecco Press. ISBN 978-0-88001-422-9 ^[11]
• Dorothy McMillan (2010). Modern Scottish Women Poets. Cannongate Books. ISBN 978-1-84767-507-1^[10]