Emily Zobel Marshall spent her childhood in a remote village in the mountains of Snowdonia in North Wales with her Black Caribbean mother and white English father.
Bath of Herbs is her 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 honours the lives of Black and Brown women and asks how they can reclaim space, both practically and conceptually. 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.
Emily will begin with an introduction to her poetry, reflecting on her process, her relationship with the natural world as a site of healing and her heritage. It will explore the power of the matrilineal line and her relationship to the writerly inheritance handed down from her grandfather, the Black Martiniquan writer, Joseph Zobel, her father, Anarchist Philosopher Peter Marshall and BBC Broadcaster Jenny Zobel, as well her upbringing on a commune and in an isolated smallholding in North Wales. She will read from her own work and from the work of poets that have inspired her.
This will be followed with a Q & A with Melanie Abrahams and readings. There will be complimentary wine and snacks and a Caribbean-style ‘lime’ to the tunes of a guest DJ.
This event is produced by Renaissance One supported by The Leeds Library and Leeds Beckett University
More information about Bath of Herbs : https://www.peepaltreepress.com/books/bath-herbs
Bio: Emily Zobel Marshall
Emily of French-Caribbean and British heritage and grew up in the mountains of Snowdonia in North Wales. She is a Reader in Postcolonial Literature at Leeds Beckett University..
Emily has had poems published in the Peepal Tree Press anthology Weighted Words (2021), Magma (‘The Loss’, Issue 75, 2019), Smoke Magazine (Issue 67, 2020), The Caribbean Writer (Vol 34, 2020, Vol 35, 2021 & Vol 36, 2021) and Stand (Vol. 19, No. 4). Her forthcoming collection, Bath of Herbs, to be published by Peepal Tree Press in July 2023 is described as ‘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.’
She is an expert on the trickster figure in the folklore, oral cultures and literature of the African Diaspora and has published widely in these fields, including her books Anansi’s Journey: A Story of Jamaican Cultural Resistance (published in 2012 by the University of the West Indies Press) and American Trickster: Trauma Tradition and Brer Rabbit (published in 2019 by Rowman and Littlefield). She plays mas in Leeds West Indian carnival and has established a Caribbean Carnival Cultures research platform and network that aims to bring the critical, creative, academic and artistic aspects of carnival into dialogue with one another. She also consults arts and educational organisations on Decolonial methodologies and approaches.
