Teacher resource
British transatlantic enslavement
Exploring with poetry and objects
Teacher resource
Ages 11–16 (KS3 and KS4)
For teachers to use with their students.
For young people to use with a parent or carer's help.
Discover this teaching resource which offers practical examples of how poetry can help teachers and students discuss the challenging and emotive history of British transatlantic enslavement.
Share the image bank PowerPoint presentation on your interactive smartboard in the classroom or explore at home on your desktop.
Use the teacher resource to help you explore British transatlantic enslavement through poetry and objects with your students, or with your family at home.
Learning objectives
- Use poetry to understand the subtle histories and unheard voices held within objects.
- Use historical research to build empathy and understanding.
This learning resource focuses on two objects from the British Museum collection: the Brooks Jug and the Description of a slave ship print.
Curriculum links
Jenny Mitchell
This resource was developed and written by Jenny Mitchell, the Inaugural Poet-in-the-Community at the British Library and an Arvon tutor.
She won the Gregory O'Donoghue Poetry Prize in 2022, and the Poetry Book Awards in 2021 for her second collection, Map of a Plantation (on the syllabus at Manchester Metropolitan University). Her prize-winning debut collection, Her Lost Language, is one of the 44 Poetry Books for 2019 (Poetry Wales) and her latest collection, Resurrection of a Black Man (2022), contains three prize-winning poems and is featured on the US podcast Poetry Unbound.
Jenny Mitchell
As a poet and workshop facilitator with many years of experience working with young people and adults, I will offer my thoughts on getting the most out of objects, using poetry as a 'gateway' to understand the subtle histories and unheard voices held within objects. We will also use historical research to build empathy and understanding and provide practical examples of how to use poetry to write about objects. I chose the Brooks Jug as a 'gateway' object because this apparently innocuous household/decorative item 'holds' so much information about the history of enslavement, whilst also concealing so much at the same time. Seeing the jug at the Museum gives me a sense of its scale and how it might have looked in a domestic setting. There are several important facts about the object that offer interesting areas of research, investigation and creativity for students. It was made in Liverpool in 1793 as an object of pro-slavery propaganda, at a time when calls for the abolition of slavery were growing in the UK and the Caribbean. Hopefully, the ideas and poetic prompts in this resource will help teachers feel that the subject of enslavement demands a creative response. Perhaps this is one of the only ways that diverse groups of young people will be able to process such a difficult, and in many ways, incomprehensible history.
Jenny Mitchell, Inaugural Poet-in-the-Community at the British Library
