Monday, 11 December 2023 12:15

The Day Mr. Zephaniah Died

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in Poetry
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The Day Mr. Zephaniah Died
Photo by Adrian Pope

The Day Mr Zephaniah Died

after Frank O’Hara

by Jenny Mitchell

On the seventh day of the twelfth month
2023, at the National Maritime Museum, a minute
since the break began, I wish the woman in my class
would not look at her phone, tell us you are gone,
leaving this behind – a chill that traps
the room when freedom is our aim – to write
that poetry can open prison doors. Your voice was key
to that great task, Brummie to your core
with a prophet’s force, labelled worthless by police
when only a young man, growing strong enough
with words to decline an OBE, your stated aim
to bring empire down – rhythm and not guns,
rhymes instead of bombs.

We fill the break with Is it true? Perhaps
a dreadful hoax,
checking every phone, the chill
ten minutes long – seeing it writ large,
your birth date and your death.

Now the class must share a poem –
Langston Hughes alive again – Freedom
will not come… through compromise and fear.

But the man who reads this out in a gentle voice
has to stop, contain his tears the day that you are gone.

Read 1798 times Last modified on Tuesday, 12 December 2023 12:27
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.