Renaissance One Supports Emily Zobel Marshall's New Book Bath of Herbs

At Renaissance One, we are thrilled to announce our enthusiastic support for Emily Zobel Marshall's first poetry publication, Bath of Herbs (Peepal Tree Press, 2023). As an organisation dedicated to fostering and celebrating diverse voices in the world of literature, we are honored to stand behind Emily's work.

Bath of Herbs is a captivating journey into the heart of storytelling, where the healing power of herbs intertwines with narratives that span time and place. Emily Zobel Marshall's unique storytelling prowess and her deep-rooted connection to the cultural heritage of the Caribbean shine brightly in this remarkable book.

Our support for Emily doesn't end here. We are equally proud to champion her broader academic endeavors, where she delves into the intricate and complex tapestry of colonial pasts. Emily's scholarly work is instrumental in shedding light on critical aspects of history that demand our attention, reflection, and understanding.

Stay tuned for updates, events, and opportunities in 2025 to engage with Emily and her thought-provoking work.

Bath of Herbs is a beautifully crafted, honest and thoughtful first collection which explores the complexity of mixed-race, hybrid identities and relationships to the English and Welsh mountains, fells, rivers and shorelines from an ‘othered’, unmappable, positionality.

It celebrates and mourns the unspoken pain and joys of motherhood; of menstrual cycles, childbirth, tending to sick children with life-threatening illnesses, the death of mothers, love in all its myriad forms and the desire to escape the constraints of domestic and family life towards different kinds of freedoms. It also revisits the confusing world of childhood; the inexplicable actions of adults and the bullies who despise perceived difference.

There is her ownership of a writerly inheritance handed down from her grandfather, the Black Martiniquan writer, Joseph Zobel, but also an awareness that this heritage has involved a movement away from the Black peasant world Zobel wrote about towards a comfortable Europeanness of being.

Other poems address the security of a middle-class life and the many pleasures it offers – but also how that world can be broken apart by death, by serious illness, by the fear that the channels of communication in a marriage have ‘gone down’.

Linking the whole is an engagement with the possibilities of healing: as in the bath of herbs in which her grandmother bathed her mother after giving birth; in the physicality of running and purificatory swimming in a river; in the care a hospital gives to her child and in the healing power of the natural world.