Poets Who Stopped: Hope Mirrlees

In this session, we will be introduced to the life and work of poet Hope Mirrlees by Professor Sandeep Parmar. Hope Mirrlees was the author of the modernist poem Paris, after which she seemed to stop writing poetry only to pick it up again later in life. Following on from sessions about Lynnette Roberts and Laura (Riding) Jackson, we are extending our definition of ‘stopping’ to think of it as -- in Parmar’s words -- ‘shifting, pausing, recalibrating’. As well as poetry, Mirrlees wrote various novels and biographies, including the pioneering fantasy book, Lud-in-the-Mist. We will also touch on some of Mirrlees’s contemporaries, Nancy Cunard and Mina Loy.

Poets Who Stopped is a project that explores poets who stopped writing during their lifetime. Often the act of stopping (if that’s what it is) becomes an important part of a writer’s mythology. It seems inexplicable why someone should choose to stop, particularly when considered from the point of view of a contemporary culture that values productivity above all else. However, by exploring these writers, we are able to think about what the stories we tell about ‘stopping’ say about our own relationship to writing, poetry and why we write it at all.