Several decades ago, poet Elma Mitchell was an early contributor to a discussion that's remained under the radar of public policy and there are many reasons why. Social care has been neglected but chiefly because the majority of carers are women, and old. And this is why Mitchell's poem, Thoughts after Ruskin features early in On Poetry and why poets are as important to a national debate as policy and money makers.
Mitchell's poem, first published in 1967 describes combat - a woman against a hostile regime of domestic demands. She underscores a woman's relentless physical activity, the violent impact caring has on her body, her own impact on the material world, the bodily fluids she has to deal with. The poem details a mid-20th century English woman's daily duties and sets them against the same era's image and expectations of a wife. Mitchell's women may be jugglers (they have to be chemists, surgeons, torturers, assassins) but ultimately they're reduced to gynaecology.
And this is why the poem is a triumph, and virtually unique in its subject matter and courage. After all, who wants to read about the domestic? So I was reminded of it this morning, reading an opinion piece about how little novelists now earn. And of course, writers should be able to live, as should carers, as should older women.
So what happens when a carer is a writer and an older woman, triply low paid or unpaid. Where are our poems or stories? When a woman critic wrote about one of my books that I'd be better off working up a sweat cleaning the kitchen floor, I wrote a poem about the kitchen floor.
But I don't see too many poems about domestic life. It's a no-go area, not flashy enough, not in any way sexy or provocative, no magical beasts. Which is another reason to read Mitchell over again and to search, actively, for older women who might, despite all the discouragement, be looking into grubby corners and describing what we find.
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