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Miss Una Marson Speaks<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n by Jenny Mitchell<\/em><\/p>\n Call me glutton as I gorged on every English At ten, when father died \u2013 a man who breathed for books \u2013 My hopes of higher learning were all drowned Poems always helped to lift their heads, calmed Coming close, I found that they were grey, Black I had to sail back home to rest, recuperate, working Soon Caribbean Voices<\/em> were heard above the Blitz, In time, my writing curled up in a ball and drowned. This poem was commissioned by Southwark Libraries for the launch of the Una Marson Library<\/a>, the first named after a woman and a person of colour in the UK.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n A brief biography of Una Marson is here<\/a>, and an article by Lenny Henry about her is here<\/a>. Below is a short film\u00a0made during the Second World War by the Ministry of Information, in which a group of West Indians, led by Una Marson and Learie Constantine, assemble at the BBC in London and describe how people of the Caribbean are helping in the war effort.<\/em><\/p>\n
word \u2013 a book-mad child in Santa Cruz, Jamaica \u2013
my first and only love the far-off Mother Country,
high-toned language on my tongue to sound as good as her.<\/p>\n
money fell into his grave. We moved from
our small market town where every name was known \u2013
to Kingston \u2013 wild. At night, bedlam disturbed dreams.<\/p>\n
by waves of unpaid bills, typing in a pool \u2013 no Shakespeare
in dry memos \u2013 till I learned how to swim, became an editor,
my paper aimed at women battered by life\u2019s flow.<\/p>\n
unsettled waters, till money swam away from me. By then,
my poems won a prize. A play had strength enough
to sail me to the Mother Country, glad to see white cliffs.<\/p>\n
bastard!<\/em> hurled at me by English men \u2013 no high-toned
words formed on their tongues. In time, I met like minds,
became an activist as race could not divide us up.<\/p>\n
for a charity until the Mother called me back. Before the war,
I became the first Black woman working at the BBC,
Calling the West Indies<\/em> where our Black soldiers spoke.<\/p>\n
a programme I produced with pride, though still called filthy
names, whispered at my back by passing whites,
hating skin the same as theirs although a different shade.<\/p>\n
I went back home, became obscure, heart giving way at sixty,
falling in a grave. Rising as you hear me now. Rising,
on this day at least, because you know my name.<\/p>\n