Black Rapunzel
Black Rapunzel
by Jenny Mitchell
Family gathers in these plaits,
each parting like a grave
for people forced to work
the cane, colour of my scalp,
sun beating on their crowns.
I’ll twist the strands into a rope,
de-colonising hair, a diaspora
wending back to help
the ones in chains
escape the transatlantic.
Black Rapunzel, I’ll uncoil my locks
in prison yards, urge those on SUS
or sectioned, deep ancestor
voices trapped in too-loose plaits,
to shimmy over walls,
hide beneath my headwrap,
floral length of Africa before the trade.
I’ll carry them to safety,
woven in my braids. We’ll grieve
till loss flies out, unbound at last.
Jenny Mitchell
Jenny Mitchell is currently the Inaugural Poet-in-the-Community at the British Library, working with the Engagement Team. She’s recently been nominated as Best of the Net 2025, won the Ink, Sweat and Tears May 2024 Poetry Competition, the Shooter Poetry Competition in 2023, the Gregory O’Donoghue Prize in 2022 and the Poetry Book Awards in 2021 for her second collection, Map of a Plantation. The prize-winning debut collection, Her Lost Language, is one of 44 Poetry Books for 2019 (Poetry Wales), and her latest collection, Resurrection of a Black Man, contains three prize-winning poems and is featured on the US podcast Poetry Unbound. She was Poet-in-Residence at Sussex University in 2024, and Artist in Association at Birkbeck from 2021-22.