Poems of Healing and Transformation

In her debut collection of poems, Bath of Herbs, Emily Zobel Marshall uses carefully crafted imagery from English, Welsh, and Caribbean landscapes to explore heritage, identity, womanhood, grief, and healing. As with her previous books, Anansi’s Journey: A Story of Jamaican Cultural Resistance (2012) and American Trickster: Trauma Tradition and Brer Rabbit (2019), Marshall, a reader in cultural studies at Leeds Beckett University, weaves themes of resistance and resilience throughout the text. Divided into four sections—“Mother Sun,” “Moon-pulled,” “Water Rites,” and “Fell”—Bath of Herbs employs therapeutic narratives to heal the trauma of her “ruptured family” (“River Rites,” 58) and, by extension, peoples of African descent.

The first act of healing takes place with her mother and grandmother. In the title poem, the speaker describes the healing ritual of women caring for women conveyed through her grandmother’s preparation of an herbal bath to assist her mother’s recovery after childbirth. Through vivid sensory imagery, Marshall invites the reader into an intimate scene of cross-generational caregiving. Details like “hot, forgetting waters” and herbs like “cloves” and “chamomile” immerse us in the sights, sounds, and smells of the healing bath. The alliteration and rhythm in lines like “skin and soul now blessed, baptised” highlight the musicality of her verse (9). With a distinctly maternal tone, Marshall guides the reader into this private moment:

And so you lead her,
coiled and naked, hurting, tender,
slowly sink her into hot, forgetting waters,
unfurl her long aching body
enveloped in steam. (9)

Guiding the reader further into this scene, Marshall’s style remains intimate and sensory. Tactile verbs document the physical motions of bath preparation, while aromatic ingredients stimulate multiple senses. The catalog of tangible nouns underscores the close attention paid to the healing materials and emotional labor involved. Ultimately, this immersive poetic mimesis builds to a cathartic climax—the repetitive chant of “blessed, baptised” imbued with consecration and resolution: “Your love hits her lungs, / into every crevice of her form diffuses, / skin and soul now blessed, baptised” (9).

From this act of physical healing, Marshall enlarges the theme to include redemptive acts of storytelling. In “Mending the Ark,” the speaker tries to salvage old family photos and documents, piecing together her mother’s history that helps to mend her spirit: “Grandmother and mother reach towards me / They tell me I can mend the ark” (28). Acknowledging the power of storytelling to connect generations, Marshall invokes the West African trickster god, Anansi, to construct tales that trace her heritage. And in “Anansi Mothers,” the speaker longs for stories to cure her pain:

When I am bowed by my vexations,
Anansi mothers, pull me up,
whisper stories of our power
and with your silver rope now raise me,
home me amongst jewels of rain,
unbend my back
then set me free
and I will find my path again. (33)

In a widening circle of healing, Marshal includes her relationship with her father in “Dad’s Solstice.” The intimate, introspective tone of the poem pulls the reader into a pastoral scene rich with sensory appeal. Marshall paints a cinematic image of the father’s sun-drenched, smiling face as he secures tents with stone pegs. The alliterative “tapping tent pegs” calls attention to the musicality of the language through its subtle rhythm. Images of the natural landscape—“foxglove spires,” “sucking bog,” and “towering bracken”—convey the unique flora of this seasonal retreat. Paired with the summer traditions of camping and hiking, the scene stimulates multiple senses through its visual, auditory, and bodily imagery—allowing the reader to inhabit the nostalgic reminiscence with the speaker. The last line’s repetition of “you bother to take us here” pointedly contrasts youthful ingratitude with the father’s fidelity in sharing meaningful rituals and yearly traditions, which she will later inherit:

You’re laughing, face backlit against the sloping sun,
tapping tent pegs through faded canvas with a flat stone,
just right for the job you say, and I wonder why, every summer,
you bother to take us here to Llyn yr Adar, lake of birds,
through foxglove spires, sucking bog, towering bracken.¹ (62)

What begins in childish petulance, “we complain incessantly—up mountain paths, packs hefty, / shoes rubbing—for who cares that it’s the longest day?” ends in a reflective, bittersweet admiration for her father’s motivations (62). In “Boat on Pebbles,” the speaker reflects somberly yet admiringly on her father’s declining health: “At night you speak of dizzying dreams, / flotsam spinning from the crests of boiling waves, / and wake hourly to sheets slick with sweat” (64). Throughout the poem, the speaker paints an emotionally complex portrait of grief, caretaking, and love for her ill father, providing an emotional release in expressing the intricacies and nuances of this challenging experience.

However, Marshall is not content to leave the healing within her family. In “The Reason I Slapped Barry,” the speaker describes being “othered” in her homeland and the dilemma of being Black and British. The speaker’s first-person account of a high school harassment delves into a moment of pain and anger: “So when you called me half caste / you cast me halfway out of my world, / my homeland, my mamwlad.”  In defiance of the mistreatment, the speaker refuses to let the unwarranted act of cruelty go unpunished and enforces her form of justice: “that slap was for halving me, / though proving that all of it / was mine in full” (78). Similarly, in “On Leaving the World of Johns,” the speaker enacts psychic revenge on John Wilkinson, a classmate: “John Wilkinson / who everyday rolls my name around his mouth / then spits it out, scattergun, on the school bus.” After a barrage of bullying racist epithets from her aggressor, “French-frog / Sheep-shagger / Stig of the Dump” (81), the speaker reclaims her agency through the meaning of her name:

Today, I observe that my name Emily
comes from Latin: Aemilia meaning striving, eager,
as in “I was eager to leave the world of Johns,”
or Emily from Greek, meaning wily and persuasive
as in trickster channelling Anansi’s energy,
coaxing with a silver tongue. (82)

And through similar, transformative Anansi “energy,” she confronts her bully:

John, I note your name, too.
John, meaning a man who is the customer of a prostitute,
John, meaning toilet
as in: I’m going to shit on the John,
on all the Johns,
eagerly. (82)

Yet reducing Bath of Herbs to a treatise on resilience would be a disservice to this collection filled with intense lyrical and evocative moments. For example, in “On Leaving on the Cusp of Spring,” the speaker, after the devastating loss of her mother, is healed by an encounter with nature:

in the tremor of the kestrel’s wing
who bargained with the wind
to stay rooted in a patch of blue;
in the clenched fist of early morning mist
opening its fingers, rising from the fans of trees,
bursting with the dreams of budding leaves. (29)

And in “Mamwlad,” the speaker uses the imagery of lakes and mountains to describe the pull between cultures: “You tell me you love this once colonised land / which, like yours, holds fast to its tongue / like lichen on stone walls” (19). In Bath of Herbs, the rich, evocative language, sensory imagery, and at times intimate, confessional tone grounded in themes of resistance offers a powerful multigenerational therapeutic narrative and an invitation to the healing center of Marshall’s mythmaking.

Geoffrey Philp, a recipient of a Silver Musgrave Medal from the Institute of Jamaica, is the author of Archipelagos (Peepal Tree, 2023), a book of poems about climate change that was longlisted for the 2023 Laurel Prize. Philp’s poem “A Prayer for My Children'' is featured on the Poetry Rail at the Betsy Hotel—an homage to twelve writers who have shaped Miami culture. His graphic novel for children, My Name Is Marcus (Blue Banyan, 2024), chronicles Marcus Garvey's life and will be published in September 2024.

Philp’s Archipelagos is reviewed by Emily Zobel Marshall in this issue of sx salon.

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[1] Throughout, all italics in the quoted poem lyrics are in the original.