In the 1960s and 1970s he was a well-known performance poet in New Zealand, and in 1980 he founded the weekly event "Poetry Live" which continues to run in Auckland as of 2021[update].
His iconic poetry collection Pipe Dreams in Ponsonby (1972) sold well and was a critical success, and his poems have been included in several New Zealand anthologies and journals.
He was the son of David Eric Mitchell, a deckhand and former stoker from Sydney, and Rossetta Cousins, a Scottish domestic servant.
[1][2] Mitchell graduated from Wellington Teachers' Training College in 1960 and taught his probationary year at Upper Hutt School.
[2] He performed regular poetry readings both in Europe and on his return to New Zealand at venues like Barry Lett Galleries.
[1] He was a contributor to the anthology A Tingling Catch: A Century of NZ Cricket Poems 1864–2009 published by Mark Pirie.
[19] In April 2010, Steal Away Boy: Selected Poems of David Mitchell was published by the Auckland University Press, edited by Martin Edmond and Nigel Roberts.
[2] Mitchell is described in the book's description as "one of New Zealand’s great poetic characters from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s: poet, lover, political activist, cricketer, impresario, mysterium and, to some, an all-round pain in the arse".
[2] The book was praised by critics: Hamesh Wyatt, reviewing the collection for the Otago Daily Times, called the book "a vivid and frequently gorgeous reminder that David Mitchell is a talented poet",[8] while Paula Green in the NZ Herald noted that his poems were "written to be performed with a playful use of word antics and repetition, but they work on the page.