Elma Mitchell

Elma Mitchell (November 19, 1919 – November 23, 2000) was a Scottish-born poet and translator based in Somerset, who published several well-received books of poetry in the 1970s and 1980s.

Early life and education Mitchell was born in Airdrie, North Lanarkshire. She attended Prior's Field School in Surrey, and won a scholarship to Somerville College, Oxford, where she gained a first in English in 1941. She went on to achieve a diploma in librarianship at the School of Librarianship, University College London. Some of her poems were published in New Statesman in the 1960s. She published several books of poetry in the 1970s and 1980s. "Mitchell frequently alludes to the strength tapped from the life force of routine necessities and occupations, especially women's traditional occupations," noted Marilyn Hacker in 1997. "This is a woman who is very conscious of being a body with all that implies of delight and restriction," commented poet Herbert Lomas in 1988.

Mitchell died in 2000, at the age of 81, in Buckland St Mary, Somerset.

Awards 1977 Cheltenham Festival Poetry Competition 1999 Cholmondeley Award

Works

Anthologies

Carolyn Kizer (1995). 100 Great Poems by Women. Ecco Press. Dorothy McMillan (2010). Modern Scottish Women Poets. Cannongate Books.