Poet and Poetry: Jennifer Johnson

| Sunday, 25 October 2026 | Print

Jennifer Johnson was born in Sudan in 1956 and spent part of her childhood in Ghana, experiences that may have helped shape her awareness of different cultures, identities, and perspectives. Her poetry has been widely published in literary magazines and anthologies, establishing her presence in contemporary poetry. Her collections include Footprints on Africa and Beyond, published by Hearing Eye, and Hints and Shadows, published by Nettle Press.

Johnson’s writing reflects an interest in human experience, personal reflection, and the complexities of existence. Her work invites readers to explore themes of identity, change, memory, and the uncertainties of life. In 2022, she won a Bread and Roses award, recognising her literary achievement. She also contributes reviews to London Grip online magazine, where her engagement with contemporary literature extends beyond her own creative work.

Through her poetry and literary criticism, Jennifer Johnson continues to contribute to the richness of the literary landscape. Her published collections, award-winning work, and involvement in literary journals demonstrate her commitment to poetry and the wider literary community.

A collection of poetry by Jennifer Johnson

Uncomfortable Times

As I was being born
in a hundred and twenty degrees
on a boat making for Khartoum,
a spaceship was circling the Earth
in icy outer space.
When adults drank tea, I drifted off,
imagined cups and saucers
floating like early astronauts
who had to live without
the certainty of gravity.
It’s hailing on the Sudanese border –
the closest I’ll get to my birthplace.
For the first time in a decade
a storm stings tourists in a boat
with no umbrellas for shelter.
I want to be a spacewoman,
pass beyond troubled weather
but acceleration sickness burns up
my protection from forgotten secrets
that now splurge out in fading ink.

Back to my own country

We fled to England, my father’s country,
when I was four. My mother carried me
as soldiers were shooting all round us.
On the plane she gave me my doll
and a comb to untangle its hair.
I shook with her terror.
I asked questions. No answers,
just my father’s hands stuck
above his head, still trying to surrender.
After landing, we shivered in the rain,
kept thinking it was about to get dark
but both clock hands reached for the sky.
That winter I caught my parents’ confusion
when they forced me to stumble
in huge Wellingtons.
Pushed by older children
who said they hated foreigners
I fell on every icy patch.

Time Unearthed

A week before my birth
my mother found a watch
unearthed by some passing lorry.
Born in the Sudan,
a place I can’t remember
except for the house
dark inside, surrounded
by the veranda full of rabbits
I never wanted to leave
and a Cornflakes box
a friend brought from England,
a place I’d never seen
but was going to spend
sunless years
learning to pretend
I was familiar with
milk bottles and Weetabix,
that I was born there.
An old photograph
shows a tiny woman – her child’s hair
wild as the shifting sands
that came to bury our home.
Years later, my dying mother
in Birmingham was still wearing
that watch, still ticking away
as she swallowed
her last painkillers.

Groundnut Chop

I remember groundnut chop
in sunny, sixties Ghana
reminding me of when I played
with shanty kids climbing trees,
spinning around to ‘I’m so dizzy’.
I remember trips to Winneba
where surf tumbled me over,
the only access to that beach
on narrow roads between lagoons
where drowned cars rusted.
I remember my sandy school,
studying geography with Kofi,
Mrs Bapat draping a snake
between her tiny arms,
an eclipse that cooled the morning.
I remember biting
into a roll full of ants, screaming
at my mother’s orange dress,
obeying her shout to ‘run’
when the earthquake shook.
I remember being bitten
by next door’s Alsatian,
my parents rushing me
to the military hospital
for rabies jabs and iodine.
I remember a road block
where soldiers told my father
to open the boot. They jumped
when they saw something
wrapped in paper, a paw-paw.
I remember when it all ended,
a morning woken by gunfire.
After the silence, a general
shouted on the radio for hours.
My school was closed.
The holes in the buildings sent us
back to England where no-one
wanted to hear about Ghana.
Groundnut chop gave way
to news-wrapped fish and chips.

Whose weather?

In the early sixties I went to scho
in Ghana. I remember the teacher
giving out geography textbooks
that had come all the way from England.
Their covers were made of a yellow weave
that somehow always looked dirty.
Each page was dense with droning prose.
There were no pictures to break up
the pages of heavy, uninviting print.
Ignore the section about the weather
the teacher said, that’s for people in England.
One girl, curious about the country
she dreamed of living in one day,
decided to read that section anyway.
Is snow what you have in the fridge?
she asked. I told her it was the same.
No-one could live somewhere that cold.
They would die! I tried to tell her
about the thick coats people wore
but she continued not to believe me.
The following year we had new books,
brightly coloured books made in Ghana
with Kofi explaining Ghanaian weather,
its brilliant sunshine and thundery
downpours, weather that somehow fitted
that country’s youthful vitality.
Everyone was so happy. They’d finally
escaped their drizzly ex-colonists.
Of course, it didn’t turn out to be
so easy and, in a few years, I had
to leave when a violent coup ousted
Nkrumah and sixteen hundred died.
For a short while before, though, life was
full of bright pictures, brilliant weather.

Passages

In this coastal town
poverty protects itself
with flags and dogs.
Visitors climb to the fort
that guarded against strangers
for millennia, look down
on ferries that feed this port.
Underneath the castle
is chalk of the same sort
teachers taught and
frightened me with.
It is worm-eaten, though,
with defensive passages
carved out in countless wars.
These chalk tunnels
dig into my memory,
my childhood obscured
by Sudanese sandstorms.
A plane simply flew my family
into clearer weather,
first to Malta, then London.
Are those head-scarfed women
sitting on the bench
tourists or have they made
one of those epic journeys
you see on the news
crossing shifting sand dunes,
Mediterranean waves?
The women put on dark coats,
cover their bright clothes.