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Art Takes All My Time: Work in the Poetry and Prison Writing of Anna Mendelssohn

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Poetry and Work

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Abstract

Anna Mendelssohn’s poetry is indelibly marked by her own experience of imprisonment and gendered discrimination. Implicated with the guerrilla activities of the Angry Brigade, Mendelssohn was convicted of conspiracy in 1972 and incarcerated in Holloway Women’s Prison. From 1971 Holloway underwent a vast and costly transformation from Victorian panopticon to secure mental hospital. This unprecedented psychiatric intervention in women’s offending reinforced the corrective role of domestic labour within the British prison system. In that same decade, gender equality legislation was introduced in Britain for the first time. This chapter brings poetic, artistic, and feminist responses to incarceration and gender equality legislation in the 1970s into dialogue, from Mendelssohn’s poetry and prison writing to projects such as Margaret Harrison, Kay Hunt, and Mary Kelly’s Women and Work: A Document on the Division of Labour in Industry 1973–1975, Leopoldina Fortunati’s theory of reproductive labour, and the prison writings of Ulrike Meinhof and Angela Davis. Drawn together by Mendelssohn’s dual attention to forms of gendered incarceration and gendered labour, these texts point beyond a strictly Foucauldian analysis of disciplinary regimes and revise an understanding of women’s work that would divorce that work from its carceral contexts.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Anna Mendelssohn, Implacable Art (Applecross, WA and Great Wilbraham, UK: Folio and Equipage, 2000), 42. My thanks to the Anna Mendelssohn Estate for their generous permission to quote and reproduce poems, artwork, and archival material at length; to Sara Crangle, for her suggestions and revisions; and to Hannah Proctor and the Under the Moon reading group for productive discussions around some of these texts.

  2. 2.

    Christopher Walker, “Influences That Shaped the Philosophy of the Angry Brigade: People for Whom Protest Became a Profession,” The Times, 7 December 1972, 18.

  3. 3.

    Linda A. Kinnahan, Lyric Interventions: Feminism, Experimental Poetry, and Contemporary Discourse (Iowa: University of Iowa, 2004), 182.

  4. 4.

    Mendelssohn, Implacable Art, 3; Grace Lake, Tondo Aquatique (Cambridge: Equipage, 1997) [unpaginated].

  5. 5.

    Letter to Herbie Butterfield, 2 March 1987, SxMs109/3/A/1/3. All references beginning “SxMs” refer to the files of Mendelssohn’s correspondence housed in the Anna Mendelssohn Archive, University of Sussex Special Collections, The Keep, Brighton, UK.

  6. 6.

    Mendelssohn, Implacable Art, 84.

  7. 7.

    Letter to Rod Mengham, undated, SxMs109/3/A/1/34.

  8. 8.

    Letter to Noella Smith, undated, SxMs109/3/A/1/58.

  9. 9.

    Mendelssohn, Implacable Art, 131.

  10. 10.

    Judith A. Scheffler, ed., Wall Tappings: An International Anthology of Women’s Prison Writings 200 to the Present, 1st ed. (New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2002 [1986]), xxiii.

  11. 11.

    Mendelssohn, Implacable Art, 78.

  12. 12.

    K. O’Donovan and E. Szyszczak, eds., Equality and Sex Discrimination Law (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), 21.

  13. 13.

    Letter to Peter Riley, undated, SxMs109/3/A/1/52/1.

  14. 14.

    A. Sachs and J. H. Wilson, Sexism and the Law: A Study of Male Beliefs and Judicial Bias (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1978), 40–41.

  15. 15.

    O’Donovan and Szyszczak, Equality and Sex Discrimination Law, 121; see also Anne E. Morris and Susan M. Nott, Working Women and the Law: Equality and Discrimination in Theory and Practice (London and New York: Routledge, 1991); Anne Morris and Therese O’Donnell, Feminist Perspectives on Employment Law (London: Cavendish, 1999); Nicola Lacey, “From Individual to Group?” in Discrimination: The Limits of Law, ed. Bob Hopple and Erika M. Szyszczak (London and New York: Mansell, 1992), 99–124; Susan Atkins, “The Sex Discrimination Act 1975: The End of a Decade,” Feminist Review, vol. 24 (Autumn 1986), 57–70; and Nicola Lacey, “Legislation Against Sex Discrimination Questions from a Feminist Perspective,” Journal of Law and Society, vol. 14 (1987), 411–421.

  16. 16.

    The SDA’s largest section, Part II, dealt with discrimination in the workplace; it also aimed to promote equality of opportunity between the sexes. Cf. Sex Discrimination Act 1975, accessed 17 November 2016, www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1975/65; Anna Coote and Tess Gill, Women’s Rights: A Practical Guide, 3rd ed. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981), 23, 41.

  17. 17.

    Carol Smart, Feminism and the Power of Law (New York: Routledge, 1989), 138; Stephanie Palmer, “Critical Perspectives on Women’s Rights: The European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms,” in Feminist Perspectives on the Foundational Subjects of Law, ed. Anne Bottomley (London: Cavendish, 1996), 225.

  18. 18.

    Anon, “T&G Plays Hard to Get,” Strike! no. 0 (1971) [unpaginated]. Mendelssohn asserts her authorship in trial transcripts.

  19. 19.

    Anon [Mendelssohn], “T&G Plays Hard to Get.”

  20. 20.

    Mendelssohn’s opening speech in her defence (11 October 1972), SxMs109/2/D/5.

  21. 21.

    Letter to Lynne Harries, undated, SxMs109/3/A/1/18. In her memoirs, Mendelssohn writes: “Give me money for poetry-readings and for publishing material. I work for what I am never paid for. I don’t want charity.” SxMs109/1/B/1/41.

  22. 22.

    Mendelssohn, Implacable Art, 78.

  23. 23.

    Mendelssohn is highly cognisant of her own Russian-Jewish identity and the legacy of Nazism. Her poetry supplies an ongoing account of the complex intersections between Nazism and its enabling legal mechanisms.

  24. 24.

    Judith Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (New York and London: Routledge, 1997), 3.

  25. 25.

    Denise Riley, Dry Air (London: Virago), 19; Wendy Mulford, “Notes on Writing: A Marxist/Feminist Viewpoint,” in On Gender and Writing, ed. Michelene Wandor (London: Pandora 1983), 31–41.

  26. 26.

    Grace Lake, viola tricolor (Cambridge: Equipage, 1993) [unpaginated].

  27. 27.

    Letter to Lynne Harries, June 1991, SxMs109/3/A/1/18.

  28. 28.

    Letter to Kate Wheale, undated, SxMs109/3/A/1/64.

  29. 29.

    Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, translated by Leon S. Goudiez (New York: Columbia University Press 1972), 98.

  30. 30.

    Kristeva, Powers of Horror, 98.

  31. 31.

    Jasbir Puar and Isabelle Barker, “Feminist Problematization of Rights Language and Universal Conceptualizations of Human Rights,” Concilium International Journal for Theology, vol. 5 (2002), 64–76 (?); also see Joan Scott, “Some More Reflections on Gender and Politics,” in Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 215; and Lacey, “From Individual to Group?”, 103–105.

  32. 32.

    O’Donovan and Szyszczak, Equality and Sex Discrimination Law, 36, 43, 47.

  33. 33.

    O’Donovan and Szyszczak, Equality and Sex Discrimination Law, 32.

  34. 34.

    O’Donovan and Szyszczak, Equality and Sex Discrimination Law, 47.

  35. 35.

    In an interview, Kelly recalls how “at first I looked it very sociologically but it became more and more obvious that you couldn’t get rid of the irrationality of this event.” Margaret Iversen, Douglas Crimp, and Homi K. Bhabha, Mary Kelly (London: Phaidon, 1997), 15.

  36. 36.

    Leopoldina Fortunati, The Arcane of Reproduction: Housework, Prostitution, Labour and Capital, translated by Hilary Creek (New York: Autonomedia, 1995), 92. Fortunati’s English translator, Hilary Creek, was one of Mendelssohn’s co-defendants during the Stoke Newington Eight trial in 1972.

  37. 37.

    For a brief history of the Women’s Workshop of the Artist’s Union see Hilary Robinson, ed., Feminism Art Theory: An Anthology 19682000 (Oxford: 2001), 87.

  38. 38.

    Robinson, Feminism Art Theory, 87–88.

  39. 39.

    Hackney Flashers, accessed 17 November 2016, hackneyflashers.com/women-and-work-1975/.

  40. 40.

    Paul Hill, Three Perspectives on Photography (London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1979), 80–83.

  41. 41.

    Mendelssohn, Implacable Art, 77.

  42. 42.

    Mendelssohn’s memoirs record how she lived in relative poverty for the rest of her life: “I heard three operas. Two at Convent Garden and one at the Coliseum. I starved myself for the tickets.” “One of the Forever Damned?” piece so titled, SxMs109/1/B/1/41.

  43. 43.

    For a fuller account of Holloway’s transformation, see Paul Rock, Reconstructing a Women’s Prison: The Holloway Redevelopment Project 19681988 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).

  44. 44.

    Quoted by Rock, Reconstructing A Women’s Prison, 106.

  45. 45.

    Ben Weinreb, Christopher Hibbert, Julia Keay, and John Keay, eds., The London Encyclopedia (London: Macmillan, 2008), 409; Rock, Reconstructing a Women’s Prison, 9, 13.

  46. 46.

    Tony Madan, Women, Prisons and Psychiatry (Oxford: Heinemann, 1996), 7.

  47. 47.

    Carol Smart, Women Crime and Criminology: A Feminist Critique (London: Routledge, 1977), 145.

  48. 48.

    For psychiatrist Tony Maden, the New Holloway represented “the peak of psychiatric intervention in women’s offending,” 11, 8; as the prison abolitionist pressure group Radical Alternatives to Prison expressed it: “the ‘bad’ label is being replaced with a ‘sick’ label that is an even more insidious and degrading attack on the identity of an individual than before.” Radical Alternatives to Prison (Holloway Campaign Group), Alternatives to Holloway (Christian Action Publications Ltd., 1972), 32.

  49. 49.

    Rock, Reconstructing a Women’s Prison, 211, 220.

  50. 50.

    Raya Levin and Judith Brandt, “Women, Prison and Economic Independence,” in The Body Politic: Writings from the Women’s Liberation Movement in Britain 19691972, compiled by Michelene Wandor (London: Stage 1, 1972), 177–178.

  51. 51.

    Levin and Brandt, “Women, Prison and Economic Independence,” 175–178.

  52. 52.

    Angela Weir, “When the Key Turns,” Spare Rib (May 1973), 36–37.

  53. 53.

    Exercise book, 24 February–2 May 1973, SxMs109/2/A/1.

  54. 54.

    Weir, “When the Key Turns,” 37.

  55. 55.

    Elaine Showalter, The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture 18301980 (London: Virgo, 1985), 83.

  56. 56.

    Weir, “When the Key Turns,” 37; similar sentiments were expressed elsewhere in the underground press, i.e. “Everything in prison is a parody, a caricatured essence, of what happens in the outside world” (“women imprisoned,” Frendz 3.30 [4 June 1971], 14).

  57. 57.

    Mendelssohn, Implacable Art, 54.

  58. 58.

    Grace Lake, “1:3ng,” in Gare du Nord: A Magazine of Poetry and Opinion from Paris, ed. Douglas Oliver and Alice Notley, vol. 1, 1997.

  59. 59.

    Tondo Aquatique [unpaginated].

  60. 60.

    Mendelssohn, Implacable Art, 110; Tondo Aquatique [unpaginated]; “Cultural,” viola tricolor [unpaginated].

  61. 61.

    Fortunati, 93.

  62. 62.

    “Woman on Plot Charge is Refused Bail,” The Times, 18 May 1972, 4.

  63. 63.

    Jill Tweedie, “The Trials and Tribulations of Preparing a Vital Defence: One Over the Eight,” The Guardian, 6 November 1972, 13.

  64. 64.

    Jackie Leishman, “Defendant Tells Jury: ‘I Oppose Bombing on Political Grounds,’” The Guardian, 17 November 1972, 20.

  65. 65.

    Peter Riley, “Anna Mendelssohn Obituary,” The Guardian, 15 December 2009, www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2009/dec/15/anna-mendelssohn-obituary; Gordon Carr, The Angry Brigade (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2010), 193–195.

  66. 66.

    Levin and Brandt, “Women, Prison and Economic Independence,” 253.

  67. 67.

    “Bomb Case Anna,” The Daily Mail, 26 March 1973, 6; “The Bomb Girls,” The Daily Mirror, 7 December 1972; “Terror Girl Anna,” The Daily Mirror, 25 February 1977, 5; quoted in Steve Chibnall, Law-and-Order News: An Analysis of Crime Reporting in the British Press (Routledge: London, 2001), 114–115.

  68. 68.

    Chibnall, Law-and-Order News, 114–115.

  69. 69.

    Mendelssohn, Implacable Art, 116.

  70. 70.

    Letter to Lynne Harries, June 1991, SxMs109/3/A/1/18; letter to Ian Patterson, undated, SxMs109/3/A/1/47.

  71. 71.

    Letter to Lynne Harries, June 1991, SxMs109/3/A/1/18; a letter to Noella Smith, undated, records the “confiscation” of Mendelssohn’s early poetry by the police, SxMs109/3/A/1/58; in a letter to Denise Riley, Mendelssohn claims that “I began writing poetry in earnest in 1966” (undated, SxMs109/3/A/1/51).

  72. 72.

    Frendz, 26 May 1972, 8.

  73. 73.

    Exercise book, 1974, SxMs109/2/A/3.

  74. 74.

    Exercise book, 1974, SxMs109/2/A/3.

  75. 75.

    Exercise book, April 1974, SxMs109/2/A/9.

  76. 76.

    Exercise book, September 1974, SxMs109/2/A/5.

  77. 77.

    Exercise book, from December 1974 to December 1975, 6 January 1975, SxMs109/2/A/6.

  78. 78.

    Time and Time Again: Women in Prison. Nina Ward with Women & The Law Collective (1986).

  79. 79.

    Angela Y. Davis, Angela Davis: An Autobiography (New York: International Publishers, 1974), 308–309.

  80. 80.

    Davis, An Autobiography, 309.

  81. 81.

    Davis, An Autobiography, 308–309.

  82. 82.

    German Federal Archive, Holding 362, File 339:XI/20.

  83. 83.

    Leith Passmore, Ulrike Meinhof and the Red Army Faction: Performing Terrorism (New York: Palgrave, 2011), 13.

  84. 84.

    Passmore, Ulrike Meinhof, 75.

  85. 85.

    Ulrike Meinhof, “Letter from a Prisoner in the Isolation Wing, June 16, 1972 to February 9, 1973” cited in Karin Bauer, ed., Everybody Talks About the Weather… We Don’t (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2008), 77–79.

  86. 86.

    Amanda Third, “Imprisonment and Excessive Femininity: Reading Ulrike Meinhof’s Brain,” Parallax, vol. 16, no. 4 (2010), 83–100.

  87. 87.

    “[…] neither did I undergo any psychiatric treatment, neither did I take the prison’s drugs […] according to the Home Office Psychiatrist whom I neither met nor was treated by, I […] was defined in a Radio Broadcast as a forensic psychopath, on the evening of December 6th 1972.” From a letter to Denise Riley, 10 October 1989, SxMs109/3/A/1/51. In a letter to Marion Stenner Evans, Mendelssohn describes herself as “exhausted and frail just like any political prisoner who has been interrogated more times than she can bear,” June 1991, SxMs109/3/A/1/59.

  88. 88.

    Letter to Rod Mengham, 8 February 2000, SxMs109/3/A/1/34.

  89. 89.

    Mendelssohn, Implacable Art, 131, 31, 132, 77; Grace Lake, “Half,” viola tricolor (Cambridge: Equipage, 1993) [unpaginated].

  90. 90.

    Letter to Marion Stenner Evens, 13–14 February 1997, SxMs109/3/A/1/59.

  91. 91.

    Letter to Rod Mengham, undated, SxMs109/3/A/1/34.

  92. 92.

    “Concern at Impact on Police and Public of Granting Parole to Angry Brigade Terrorist,” The Times, 14 February 1977, 5.

  93. 93.

    Conor O’Clery, “Angry Brigade Release ‘No Cause’ for IRA Hope,” The Irish Times, 15 February 1977.

  94. 94.

    Malcolm Pithers, “Anna: Leave Me Alone,” The Guardian, 17 February 1977, 24.

  95. 95.

    Alan Dunn, “The Home Girl Who Became a Revolutionary,” The Guardian, 15 February 1977, 15.

  96. 96.

    Clive Borrell, “Mr. Rees Defends Angry Brigade Woman’s Release,” The Times, 15 February 1977, 2; “Breaking of Anna the Bomber,” The Daily Mirror, 15 February 1977, 8.

  97. 97.

    Letter to Herbie Butterfield, 2 March 1987, SxMs109/3/A/1/3.

  98. 98.

    Time and Time Again: Women in Prison.

  99. 99.

    Letter to John Kerrigan, 12 July 1990, SxMs109/3/A/1/26.

  100. 100.

    Grace Lake, Sneak’s Noise: Poems for R.F. Langley (Cambridge: Infernal Histories, 1998).

  101. 101.

    Tondo Aquatique [unpaginated].

  102. 102.

    Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (New York: Random House, 1975), 21.

  103. 103.

    Exercise book, December 1974–December 1975, SxMs109/2/A/6.

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Careless, E. (2019). Art Takes All My Time: Work in the Poetry and Prison Writing of Anna Mendelssohn. In: Walton, J., Luker, E. (eds) Poetry and Work. Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26125-2_6

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