August Writer Showcase: Chrissie Poulter

 Chrissie Poulter

Our eighth showcase of 2024 turns the spotlight on writer Chrissie Poulter. Chrissie studied for her MA in Creative Writing with the Open University at the same time as me, though she specialised in writing drama. She is a member of our alumni writing group, The Twenty-Twenty Club. She is a brilliant writer of fiction and non-fiction, and I am very pleased to be able to showcase her writing here this month

Chrissie Poulter

Biography

Chrissie was born Christine in St James’ Hospital in Leeds, not too many years after the NHS came into being. The name 'Chrissie' didn’t join her until her student days 18 years later.

        She started school when she was three, as her mother, an infant teacher, was asked to go back to teaching and took Chrissie with her. The older Juniors made much of the toddler and took turns ‘minding’ her! In the end it was an out of school activity in her teenage years, which led to her finding an outlet for her love of storytelling, play and theatre, the world she has lived in for over half a century. She joined a youth drama workshop set up by Leeds Education Department and led by professional theatre folk in a nascent company called Interplay (still going strong, though in a different direction, today).

Later, while studying Drama & Theatre Arts at Birmingham University, she and three fellow students set up a community theatre company – Jubilee – based in the newly formed borough of Sandwell. Everything centred around story-building  and play - sessions with children in local libraries, shows for pubs, street theatre, summer playschemes and projects in school – there was even a Play-bus.

        Three years after graduating, she was back teaching theatre practice at Birmingham University. They wanted a community arts practitioner and it was a very new field.

When her grandfather died six years later, she moved home to Yorkshire to be near her family, where she was employed as Drama Officer for the regional Arts funding body at the time  – Yorkshire Arts. She also studied part-time for an MA in Cultural Studies at Leeds University,  graduating in 1990 – at which point she was Deputy Director at Yorkshire Arts. One day, attending a time-management course and advised to spend time on what was of personal importance in life, Chrissie decided to up sticks, returning to teaching and theatre-making, combined, not long after, with a move to Ireland.

As a lecturer at Trinity College Dublin, she was again teaching theatre practice, alongside Improvisation on the actor-training programme. She was also busy with neighbourhood theatre projects in Northern Ireland, with her husband, who was from Belfast. After ten years of marriage and with no children to worry about (‘We worked different sides of the border and were hardly ever home. If we’d had a cat it would of starved, never mind a child’), Chrissie continued alone and travelled all over Europe with theatre and creative arts projects, during the summer research periods all universities enjoyed at that time.

In 2009, a career break enabled her to  return to Yorkshire to be with her parents. After that, commuting to Dublin on a weekly basis in term-time, she remained for four years with her father after her mother died, at which point he followed his darling wife to wherever their souls now wander.

It was then, fully independent and looking to retirement, that Chrissie decided to take her writing seriously, but not as an academic writer or playwright as before. She wanted to explore creative writing and her own story, so registered for the Open University MA in Creative Writing in 2018. Her parents had been two of the first OU students back in the early 70s. Now Chrissie wanted to go to the same ‘school.’  

When the COVID pandemic hit in 2020 she had moved to a back-to-back house in the Yorkshire market town of Otley and chose to spend lockdown there instead of Dublin. Life moved online and the world shrank. Once the release date was set, she headed towards the Yorkshire Dales, to an apartment on the second floor of a converted mill, where she happily resides now in retirement.

Sadly, she let the writing slip in those first couple of years after graduation, invited instead back into writing for publication about theatre practice. Gladly, she discovered the 20-20 club organised by Lou for graduates of their 2020 OU cohort and here she is, picking up her own pen and story once more. Publication is not on the horizon yet, though she has had plenty of that in the non-fiction world. She has written short stories, dabbled in drabbles and begun a couple of novels, still not sure which form suits best her tendency to overpopulate a piece within the first few pages! 

Selection of published non-fiction, all within the world of theatre practice:

 

Playing The Game (Macmillan. Basingstoke. 1987)

A practical book of drama games, written originally for local adults working with young people in their neighbourhood in Belfast during ‘The Troubles’ and new to drama.

 

Playing the (power) game', in Contemporary Theatre Review 3 (1) p9-22 (Routledge. London 1995) 

In which I looked at how Brazilian Theatre Director Augusto Boal had influenced my work and how I had adapted his approach for use in Ireland.

 

Children of The Troubles' in Dramatherapy: theory and practice 3, Editor: Sue Jennings (Routledge, London 1997)  

In which I reflect on staging people’s stories in Belfast, as part of Sue’s book of pieces by invited community workers and artists. She was making a case that what we were doing was akin to dramatherapy.

 

Playing with Pain: the Need for Guardianship in Group Work, in New Theatre Quarterly, 23, pp376-379. (Cambridge University Press. Cambridge 2007)

An article I contributed to this special edition commissioned after the death of theatre director and teacher Clive Barker.

 

The teacher as artist -the artist as teacher, in All Changed? Culture and Identity in Contemporary Ireland (Cultúr agus Féiniúlacht in Éirinn an Lae Inniu) Editors: Pádraig Ó Duibhir, Rory Mc Daid and Andrew O’Shea (Duras Press. Dublin 2011)

The book is based on a series of talks. Mine was replacing one meant to be given by Augusto Boal, who was terminally ill and unable to travel to Ireland.

 

Playing The Game: A Drama workshop guide  2^nd edition revised (Palgrave 2018)

A revised and extended version of my 1987 book.

 

Nine Lives and Counting ch 12 pp171-193 in Clive Barker and His Legacy: Theatre Workshop and Theatre Games,  Editors: Paul Fryer and Nesta Jones, (Methuen Drama 2022)  

A book following-on from the 2007 journal about Clive’s work.

 

Which Me do you See?: Emotional and Social intimacy, Researched or Revealed,  chapter 3, in Stanislavsky and Intimacy, Edited by Joelle Ré Arp-Dunham (Routledge 2024)

A book written by practitioners about their work in developing intimacy protocols and processes in theatre and film training and production.

******

Chrissie has sent us several lovely pieces, all of which I'm sure you'll enjoy. The first is a short children's piece:

Introduction by author: As a child, the eldest of five, I would make up stories for my young brothers, to keep the peace in the back of the ford transit van, as my dad drove us to a camp site somewhere in Wales, or Devon or another place miles from home. Decades later, I have no children of my own but have told and heard stories from others for all this time. With a lifetime of encouraging others to step into their own (speaking) voice, this little doodle of a story quietly invites the listening child to prepare for bed, for sleep and for dreaming, through the use of observation, relaxation and imagination - those same essentials needed to create stories in the first place. Sleep well, all you storytellers, and may your dreams be good ones ...

 

Living the dream      

Terry has a favourite dream.

It isn't there every night, but if Terry is very careful s/he can help the dream to happen.

In the dream, it is a summer’s day, the sort that makes you want to play outside.

So Terry snuggles into bed, a woolly nightcap on her head, and with the winter chill forgotten, Terry dreams of summer cotton.

Bright cotton tops and cotton wool clouds and sometimes the seaside and holiday crowds.

All s/he needs, to dream of the sea, is a basin of water and a deep breath or three…

Then the feel of a flannel to wipe her face clean, and there is a beach towel inside the dream.

If Terry just wants to be all alone, the trick is to think of it on the way home.

A dog or a cat or a pigeon will do – and then in the dream there will be a great zoo!

Imagining tigers is easy enough, or cheetahs and leopards and lions

Little or large is just about size but being a cat is a look in the eyes.

It’s the way they look lazy when lying around, then startle the world as they leap from the ground.

They run and they jump and chase what is there, then calmly lie down and continue to stare.

So close your eyes and go to sleep and see what happens when you count those sheep!

©  Chrissie Poulter

Next is a short story which displays Chrissie's experimental hybrid style:

Note from author: Written in lockdown, trying to do an online Masters in Creative Writing

 

Prisoner 803

True, though, isn’t it?

Be careful what you wish for … All that glitters … and so forth.

Stick to the same wishes and you’re stuck in the same cell. Block.

Yes – Block.

Block A. Cell 803.

The room with no corners.

Nowhere to hide.

Obsessive democracy.

I’ll see yours if you’ll see mine.

See mine.

See mine.

See mine.

I’ll start so I can’t finish.

Nothing to show.

Nothing to see.

Move along there please.

 

‘Helen?’ A concerned voice.

I don’t care for concerned voices. I gave them up for Lent years ago.

         ‘Helen?’ A persistent, concerned voice.

Words leave my mouth. I can hear them. ‘Hi. How’s it going?’ Sounds ok. Everyday sort of words. They’ll do.

         ‘Helen, we were wondering …’ Same voice, only now it’s the old One For All and All For One, is it?

Shall I look? Could play a guessing game. Do I recognise the voice? They all sound the same after a while. The whine gets to their real voice and squeezes it through a tube, like toothpaste. Sparkly white concern on a closed mouth smile – which I choose not to look at, yet. Open mouth for laughter and bonhomie. Close mouth for fishing. Well, there’s no fish here – and anyway, no voices are ever heard in Block A. Two years solitary confinement. I tell a lie. I heard a voice once in here - this year. Making up for lost time. Not bad, I suppose.

I’ll never hear my mother’s voice again. Or my father’s. Or any grandparent - though the silence of solitary lets me hear their voices in my head. I talk to them – out loud, though not loudly. No-one here to hear or stand and stare. I live with my ghosts and we love each other more, with each passing day.

Familiar phrases. Family Favourites. With each passing day … where did that come from? Who said it first? Or wrote it first? A hymn, by her and him.

Is the English language fit for purpose, dear reader?

Visually, indeed. Aurally, not necessarily so.

         ‘Written in 1865 by Lina Sandell several years after she had witnessed the tragic drowning death of her father. Composed in 1872 by Oscar Ahnfelt.’

         Thank you, Wikipedia, old friend.

My mother led the choir. I was with her when she died.

So you keep telling us.

I followed them to this school – only it’s different now – nearly half a century later. They had a playground, watched the telly, went on holiday to summer camp. Then they were done - blue gowns and delighted faces. Not even proud, simply delighted. Holding their scrolls the same year I borrowed a skirt from my mother to wear under my boring black gown – a long pencil skirt she’d worn in the choir when they sang Messiah. I nearly fell over at each step.

I shall speak with my ghosts so happily today, resisting the temptation to search for Lina Sandell and Oscar Ahnfelt – or 1865 or the death by drowning of Lina’s dad. Did they say Dad in 1865? I shan’t look. My brain is exploding. Everything touches everything. So easy to lose one’s way. Theseus had the right idea. Where’s the wool? Could I thread it through my ears to find a way through the maze that is my mind. Cotton wool in your ears. That’s different. Don’t even think about it. Try not to think. Breathe. That’s it. Breathe.

         ‘How about it?’ The voice again.

How about what? What did she (for it is a she – I think) say before how about it?

I look up.

Headphones in her ears and holes in her jeans, my niece Trina stands in the doorway - head turning slowly from left to right, with a look of disbelief and disgust, as she surveys the 'so-you-haven't-moved-a-muscle' evidence before her. She is here to clean the flat, for which I am to pay a prince's ransom to her 'charity-of-choice'.         

I suspect my sister has sent her, to chart my descent into solo squalor. Trina would never clean someone else’s midden, regardless of worthy causes. Her painted eyebrows have risen to meet her purple dyed hair.

         'What about these?'

         Her eyes and right arm sweep across a mound of jettisoned paper-wrapped word-balls.

         'Ah yes, those bits of my brain. Send them to the tip - or the green bin - whichever pleases your politics.'

         Then I can start again.

Instead, she unwraps them, one by one, and reads the abandoned words therein

My feet are too cold to stop her.

 

“It wasn’t that Borril didn’t like people. It was just that they were exhausting. Borril was a compulsive worrier – about other people. Being in a café, for example, the only comfortable place was facing a wall, where s/he couldn’t see anyone else – except their companion, should there be one. The companion could watch the world go by behind Borril’s head whilst still being able to eat and converse. Borril, on the other hand, would be constantly worrying about anyone in view – had the waiter noticed that table 10 were ready to order? Or that there was no salt on table 3? Or that .. or that .. or that … Most of the time Borril preferred to stay home and have the same daily dinner – preparing and cooking it with the minimum of fuss, whilst listening to the radio. If the radio voices became too anxious or strident – as happened often on chat shows and current affairs panels, Borril would ‘kill’ the radio and continue on alone.”

 

‘That’s you’

‘Yes’

‘That’s autobiography’

‘So?’

‘You’re not called Borril’

‘No’

‘So it’s autofiction is it?’

‘Is it?’

 

^                      ^

^     ^               ^    ^

Alfie Dresden had a cat.

Nothing untoward in that

But when dear Alfie went away

The cat decided she would stay

So now the neighbours do delight

In calling out into the night

To see which house the cat will grace

Though claiming her is not their place

For Alfie may come back one day

To haunt us and to surely say

‘That’s my cat there you scrabbit lot.

You think she cares? Well not a jot.

She has you all wrapped round her paw.

You give her cream and let her store

Her slaughtered birds and murdered mice

By sheds and walls – you think that’s nice?

Just trying to prove it’s you she loves?

Don’t make me laugh you cooing doves.

She’d rip your throat without a word

Of sorrow or regret

For she is Alfie’s through and through

And he’s not finished yet.

No he’s not finished, he’s not finished, he’s not finished yet

 

 

‘That’s not prose.’

‘You’re a critic now, are you?’

‘It’s a poem.’

‘It’s a cat.’

 

“A table! Who’d have thought it? Her life revolutionised by the arrival of a dropleaf kitchen table. No more balancing her dinner on her knee, as she simultaneously tried to hug the radiator and listen to the radio. Virginia Woolf might have been spouting on about the advantages of having ‘a room of one’s own in which to write’ but she’d not mentioned the need for a table.

Jenny was sure she was developing curvature of the spine, or at least squashed innards -wherever innards might be. Before the arrival of The Table, her dinner-with-Radio4 each evening, had been swiftly followed by a climb up the mountainous stairs to her bed, whereupon her night of writing and reading would stretch from nine o’clock to midnight at least, and sometimes beyond. No need for a radiator when swathed in jumpers and quilts. This was the curvature zone. Sitting in bed, leaning awkwardly over a notebook, novel or screen, she had to twist to one side to get a glimmer of useful light from a lamp designed to throw a warm glow around a non-literary living room, not to illuminate a reading marathon and some nascent novel-writing.”

 

‘Your name’s not Jenny.’

‘No.’

‘But that’s your table.’

‘Yes.’

‘Right. Are you writing a memoir?’

‘No.’

‘Right. Sorry to hear that your back hurts.’

‘Thanks.’

‘I think I’ll come back tomorrow. Now I can see what needs to be done.’

‘Right. Thanks.’

 

I watch the door close behind her.

 

I was born on page 125 of my mother’s memoir.

         We each received a personal copy, from her, in the hospice, with a message written in her familiar hand, only a day or two before all strength left her. The end of words. The end of questions and answers. Too late. Read the book. Which we did – and do. I was born on page one hundred and twenty-five.

 

© Chrissie Poulter

Next is another short story which displays Chrissie's characteristic stream-of-consciousness style, and the beautiful way she combines humour and pathos. I find the little details, the throwaway puns, and the poignant conveying of emotion, extremely effective:

Low-flying Porridge

 

Mary:                  My poor little child that’ll have no father.

Juno :                 It’ll have what’s far better, it’ll have two mothers.

(Juno and the Paycock – Sean O’Casey)

 

‘What’s a workshop?’

         Yes – let’s start there, on that day, back then. See where that takes us.

Seven years old and not a flutter of embarrassment, ignorance or intent. Pure curiosity in the voice, the eyes regarding his porridge, not his mother. She, the only other person in the room, a weary fount of all knowledge and sometimes none. One thing she knew for sure was that Darryl was looking for the raisins in his porridge. Raisins he liked, the rest he did not. The daily get-it-down-you routines wore thin way back, when he was tiny - her arm aching from the effort of turning a teaspoon into a dive-bombing giggle-maker. She’d stopped that foolishness, the day he nearly choked as ‘open wide’ and the porridge-drop coincided mid-giggle. Half the porridge headed towards his lungs. Self-preservation promptly sprayed the deadly particles back where they came from - not that the precision act of landing on a teaspoon had ever been likely. Trying to wipe some from her face and stop the rest landing on Darryl’s one-piece, brand new, babygrow, she had failed in the crucial quick response demanded of a mother. The nurse in Accident and Emergency had told her, in that I’m-not-a-teacher-or-police-officer-but- tone of voice, that she – Stephanie Mary Nora Jones - had nearly killed her own baby, with a mixture of low-flying porridge and ignorance.

         ‘A workshop?’ She fleetingly wondered if a discussion would distract Darryl enough for him to look her in the eye and eat his breakfast.

         ‘Old Macky has a workshop in his garage.’ Darryl’s eyes remained on the raisins.

         ‘Yes. That’s right. He makes things in there - and mends them.’

         ‘Jenna goes to a drama workshop on Saturdays.’

         ‘That’s right …’ Steph could sense one of Darryl’s convoluted wranglings on the failings of the English language in the air.

         ‘And you just said “I’ll see you at the workshop.”’

         ‘What?’

         ‘In your meeting. Just now. You said “I’ll see you at the workshop - next week.”’

         Working from home had its advantages and its disadvantages. Trying to have a meeting via video-link, with people the other side of the world, just before their lunchbreak, which was in the middle of your breakfast-with-seven-year-old … this was not one of the advantages.

         ‘In France,’ Darryl’s voice continued – no change in tone.

         Steph started.

‘Next week in France. …That’s what you said.’ He was still staring at his porridge, swirling the spoon around, slowly, as if neither raisins nor oats bore any distinction worthy of attention.

         Of course. He had been listening. Or rather – he had been hearing. This wasn’t about words … it was about separation. It was about who this ‘workshop’ person was, to be taking her away from her son. Stupid of her. Still – no regrets. She’d learnt that in A&E all those years ago. Learn. Change. Move on. Only this time she was going to move out. Yes. Out.

         Darryl looked up and at her. ‘Can I come with you?’ he said.

 

It was the day of the flying ants. They both remember that. Busy black lines of the wingless ones had appeared the day before, tracing landing strips across the crazy paving. Not that anyone seems to teach flying ants about runways. Spiralling up like Harrier jump jets in a ballet class, they are carried away on the air in clouds of momentary pestilence, alarming to anyone who doesn’t like surprises. A day later and they’re gone, the baggage handlers back underground and all of it just another of those regular rituals which keep the planet ticking over … Like a time bomb …  

Darryl remembers the table cloth was plastic, with pictures of cherries on it, in squares. It scratched his seven-year-old knees. And the kettle had a whistle.

Steph doesn’t realise she’s remembering, or that any of this took place in a place. She remembers what was said – and some of what was felt – she thinks.

 

‘Of course you can come with me pet – if you eat your porridge.’

 

They didn’t go to France. They went to her mother’s. Darryl loved that hide-and-seek house. ‘Granny Annie!’ he would say, and shout and sing, every chance he got – not unkindly - more for the enjoyment in the rhyming than the greeting. Then the running to hide in a different room in the house, laughing with delight when Granny Annie found him or, more often than not, pretended not to - slumping into a chair nearby and putting on a sad voice, to bemoan his disappearance.

         ‘Here I am!’ Darryl’s voice would ring out but Granny Annie always positioned herself facing away from where he was hiding, so the game of loss and reunion could be played out to its full.

         ‘Where can he be? Oh, my precious Darryl. I’ve gone and lost him altogether.’

         ‘Granny Annie!’ Darryl would run over and grab her hand. ‘Here I am. I’m here.’

         Oh, the hugs and the kisses and the lost is found and the laughter and the love.

 

Did he really come away with me? Is that how it went?

Or did I take him?

Is there a difference?

The court seemed to think so.

Did I leave him with my mother?

Whose house the doll’s house?

What?

Ibsen. Nora left her husband – and her children. Did I take my son with me? Or did he come away with me?

Is there a difference?

The court seemed to think so.

Juno.

What? Who?

Mary’s mother.

Ann?

No – Juno … Sean O’Casey.

-        

Mary:                  My poor little child that’ll have no father.

Juno :                 It’ll have what’s far better, it’ll have two mothers

 

That was different – he wasn’t alive yet … that baby … in the play - if it was a he … could be a she … or they … she was expecting - but it wasn’t born yet.

 

         ‘Steph?’

         A voice from outside her head. Not her voice. Her name though. She looks up. Two people are standing there. She looks back down. There is a pen in her hand. She puts it on the table and closes the notebook. The story will have to wait.

         ‘Steph, you have a visitor.’ The voice again. A young woman. Wearing blue.

         A different voice ‘Hello mum.’ This was the other person speaking. A man.

         Why did he say Mum? Does she know him? Does he know her? She has … had a son but he was seven. This man is – a man.

This man is Darryl.

Darryl remembers Granny Annie’s kitchen. Red and white gingham curtains at the window and a red Aga cooker. A washing machine, across from the Aga, the spin cycle a source of great hilarity as child-Darryl leant back on the vibrating machine and let it shake his voice about. The smell of soap powder and cinnamon, of burnt toast and coffee, no similes needed … what it was like was like itself … like Granny Annie’s kitchen – which is what it was, for all those years. The invisibility he experienced as a child, when all around was swirling and spitting, it was that which helped him to learn how to listen and to hear the said and the unsaid – to notice the seen and the unseen, the shared and the hidden. And then there was the safety of Granny Annie’s kitchen and her ever-ready Yes, love? Yes, love.   Were there ever two more perfect words? He can see himself back there, back then.

 He is still seven years old. His mother has been gone for some weeks now - nobody knows where, though Darryl thinks they do.

He is sitting at the kitchen table in Granny Annie’s house. He lives here now – though he doesn’t know that. He thinks he’s staying for the summer holidays. He’s singing the well-known nursery rhyme as he writes. ‘Baa Baa blacksheep, have you any wool’ He pauses to choose a different coloured pencil. ‘Yes sir, yes, sir three bags…’ He pauses. ‘Granny Annie?’

‘What is it Darryl, love?’

‘How do you write “full”? Like “three bags full.” It doesn’t look right. Well – it does look right … but I don’t think it is.’

‘Show me what you have there.’

Granny Annie, drying her hands as she walks across the kitchen, flicks the tea-towel onto her shoulder and looks over Darryl’s.

‘Aha – that says fool, not full.’ She exaggerates the vowels ‘Foo-o-o-o-l – like when you are playing around and it gets a bit silly, or dangerous. Someone might say “Stop fooling around or you’ll hurt yourself.” See here …’ and she takes up a coloured pen to write f u l l , this time exaggerating the consonants ‘Fu-l-l-l-l-l’

‘So why doesn’t wool rhyme with fool? They look the same.’

‘That’s English for you. Makes the rules and breaks the rules.’

‘Granny Annie’

‘Yes love?’

‘How do you write “rule” It rhymes with fooool’

‘You don’t miss a thing do you?’ She laughs. ‘It’ll either get you into trouble or get you out of it … depends which way the wind blows.’

Well, the wind blew Darryl towards a life of detection. Seeing the detail, hearing the difference, putting two and two together to make joy for some and terror for others. You could say he started in earnest that day, with the mystery he’d been thinking about for months.

‘Granny Annie?’

‘Yes love?’

‘Is this right?’ He holds up his notebook.

Granny Annie reads ‘Don’t be a fool… you can’t pull the wool over my eyes.’ She looks at her grandson. ‘Yes love. You’ve written it very well. But it’s not nice to call someone a fool. Was it on the tele?’

‘It’s what the man at the meeting said. I thought he said full. Then Mum said “I’ll see you at the workshop, next week – in France.”

(…)

The young woman in blue is a nurse. Each day she puts raisins in Steph’s porridge – at Darryl’s suggestion. The first time, Steph wept, silently. That was the day she knew he must be her son. One day, when Steph nearly chokes on a raisin, the nurse will patiently spoon jelly and ice-cream between Steph’s exhausted lips until that too shall cease. Even water will fail to trickle in as life trickles out. But Steph will die happy. Her heart full, which for so long was broken.

 

© Chrissie Poulter

And finally, here is a piece of non-fiction, taken from Clive Barker and his legacy: Theatre workshop and theatre games (pp 174-176, eds Paul Fryer and Nesta Jones, 2022, Methuen Drama, London Bloomsbury]:

Horseplay and hugs

Dear Clive,

    Maybe, when people read this the world will have changed – again – and the handshake will be back, with its best mate the hug. However, right now, in May 2021, we’re over a year into a global pandemic – COVID 19 has kept us in lockdown for most of that time, virtually halted international travel, closed shops, schools, businesses and more. Crucially for my conversations with you – it has closed in-person activity in university drama departments and theatres. Over a year ago, when the pandemic was declared on March 11^th 2020, the chief medical advisor in America, Dr Fauci, said he thought no-one should shake hands again, ever.     A year later and the UK media were headlining the English prime minister’s announcement that we would be allowed to hug each other from May 17^th 2021, when ‘social distancing’ rules would be relaxed. The last time I had a hug was a year ago – from my brother, on my birthday.

I wanted to talk with you, about ‘horseplay’ – its place in your approach to actor training and groups in general – but it seems unreal and irrelevant to raise my questions about players crawling across the sprawling bodies of their playmates, when the immediate puzzle is how to rehearse intimacy – or anything – whilst keeping apart by a minimum distance of two metres. Beyond that, the challenge for me is how to engage the players in any kind of collaborative physical activity when the ‘room’ is a computer screen and the players each confined to one small square of the many caught in that glass.

    I usually make much of a handshake at the beginning of a first workshop with a group. If it is an international group, the hug is also discussed. Well before social distance became a legal health requirement of everybody, some of my students would make it clear that they only ever felt comfortable with a social distance between them and other people – no pandemic required. The handshake is a useful construct, like a perfectly formed sentence. You have to step into each other’s personal space, to be able to touch hands. Physical contact is a close and intimate thing. The handshake, however, does not overstay its welcome, allowing you to part amicably. It has a natural ending, an in-built full-stop, as you release the hand and step away.

    If the group is international, we will start to explore greetings in mother tongues other than English. We learn from those in the group whose cultural, or subcultural, greeting of choice, is not a handshake - those whose tradition is to kiss on either cheek the person they are greeting or to put their hands together and bow while saying Namaste, those whose subcultural greeting might be a high five or one of discomfort at human contact - not wishing to touch another person or be touched. As this conversation, around a seemingly innocent opening, continues, we discover the cultural diversity and richness within the room. There are smiles, as people appreciate being recognised as Other, as a non handshaker, a non-English speaker, yet all will happily go on to use handshakes and hellos, as those around them become interested in the alternatives, welcoming the hugs and the high fives.

    That was pre-pandemic. Now my classes are in the world of computer screens. ‘Hello’ becomes the first point of contact each session – typed into the comments or ‘chat’ section of our shared screens. In a way it echoes the handshake. It is a physical engagement – albeit with the keyboard. We lean close, touch the keys to type a greeting, then I count down “3,2,1, Send” and a cascade of hellos tumbles into the ‘room’. We play games, the players adapting old favourites for this new playroom:

     Zip, you call someone’s name and they have next call.

    Zap, everyone gets close up to their camera – a chessboard of eyes covers the screen.

    Zoom, everyone dives out of range of their camera, disappearing from the screen.

    Laughter, engagement – ‘release’, then back in our seats we get ready to focus. Some will turn their cameras off from time to time – part of the comfort protocol we establish as a group from the start. With camera off you can still listen, but no-one will watch if you dance, walk around or lie down to breathe. Sensory overload, privacy concerns or simply the need to move – you are still ‘in the room’. With microphones on mute most of the time, people use the available cartoon images – hearts, a raised hand, applause – to stay connected and there are always digital breakout rooms for work in small groups. I miss the sound of all that in the one, live, physical workshop space. It’s been a muted year all round.

 

© Chrissie Poulter

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And finally we come to The Big

 Interview, in which Chrissie kindly

 answers writing-related 

questions and lets us into 

some of her writing secrets...

 

  

 

1.     How old were you when you first knew you wanted to be a writer, and what set you off down that journey?

I’ve never wanted to ‘be’ anything. I've always loved stories, making them up, hearing them and acting out. They were a part of my childhood from as early as I can remember. My mum was an infant teacher and taught me to read – I remember alphabet posters on the walls at home – low enough for a tot to see! Between reading, being read to and making up my own stories to entertain my younger brothers, I was ready when we had to write stories at school. I still have one – in an exercise book with a wallpaper cover. The teacher’s comments throughout are summed up as: great story, now hurry up and finish it!

That inability to finish has remained true ever since …

A couple of key moments, leading to my writing, happened in my teenage years. From age 15, I went to a Saturday drama workshop. One day we were told that one of the younger girls, a quiet 13 year-old with no family, had died suddenly, of a brain aneurism. I couldn’t hold or accept the fact that she had died. It seemed so unfair. I didn’t have the words to talk about it, but that night words came, in my head, as a poem. That tree has died. It wasn’t very tall or strong. But that tree had life and it has died. …. Or something like that .. there were a few verses. About not being loved but having life, and having that life taken away …  For some reason the poem ended up in the school magazine. No doubt I was meant to write something and didn’t, so sent in the only poem I’d actually brought into being.

The other moment was through school. I was already involved with drama and  the school plays (Drama wasn’t a taught subject outside of English Lit at that stage) – and my Saturday drama workshops were linked to street theatre, created collaboratively before being written down. There was a third strand though – public speaking and debating. Here, the writing was everything, together with the ability to articulately respond to questions and rebuttals. I remember that one year our team of three won a local competition with a speech I’d written. I found it recently, the neat little pile of file cards still inside their envelope - ‘The Years That the Locust Hath Eaten’. Our wonderful teacher Mrs Urquhart was our coach and inspiration. My father was my harshest critic. Between them they produced a winner!!

 

2.     Tell us about the books and writers that have shaped your life and your writing career.

Ursula Le Guinn – The Earthsea Trilogy. The idea that things have a true name, not known or given away easily. The power in a name. The significance of someone telling you their true name. The learning of the names of everything on the planet … I have a fascination with words, the look of them on a page, the sound of them, the ambiguity of proximity to other sounds and other words, playing with meaning … I also live in the thrall of ambiguity, of resonance and association, of veering off a path because something caught the eye or the mind, or a memory.

John Berger – To The Wedding. The weaving of the journeys – mother, father and daughter … the maybe-ness of whose story we are in – the extraordinary entwining of a dance of death and a wedding dance as Time allows itself to be drawn from future and past into  the here and now of our reading.

Ann Michaels – Fugitive Pieces. The language of a poet from the first page of a novel, blowing apart my hitherto functional experience of language as the tramlines for story

Both the Berger and Fugitive Pieces were stories about searching for a story .. of characters piecing together memory with a desperate need to know what happened – to know their own story.

I once did a project with actors, musicians and an artist. Each of these two novels was embodied by an actor, with a third as the legend of skeleton woman … Physicalising the search for story, each was only allowed to use the language of their book. I remember Róisín, as Nina, ripping out the pages of To The Wedding as she refuses to acknowledge her story .. then skeleton woman picking up and reading to her the fragments from the floor.

We went to a conference/festival in Naples to talk about the work – about using theatre practices as a way to explore a novel. At that stage, early in our work, each actor had prepared a 15 minute performance of their novel – as a way of introducing it to the rest of us. Those performances were so powerful. The actors were so immersed in their novel.

An eminent poet-professor, after hearing us talk and seeing the pieces, seemed to be scandalized – we clearly wanted the death of the writer, she said. Nothing could have been further from the truth … but I can see that our way is not the usual way to explore a novel! Interestingly enough, the actress, Mia, who was Skeleton Woman, is now a well-known novelist and Róisín an award-winning film-maker … story-tellers all …

 

3.     Have your children, other family members, friends or teachers inspired any of your writing? In what way? 

Someone who has unwittingly and posthumously inspired my writing and life is the late Kenneth McLeish, translator of the ancient Greek dramas, who worked with us for a year, creating and writing a new play – Orpheus, written in the style of Euripides. I remember Ken’s wife Valerie telling me how she had to call the taxis when they visited Greece as Kenneth didn’t want to spoil the Ancient Greek language in his head.

I have a sense that there is something of that in my unintentional but welcome lack of a television and my difficulty with academic language. Instead, I treasure the swirling sounding language in my head where rhythm and image lend a hand in the sense-making.

 

4.     Does the place you live have any impact on your writing?

Since I moved into creative prose writing, the places where I have lived have had a huge impact on my writing. My writing up until then was playwriting – so mainly dialogue – and writing for teaching, conferences and publications reflecting on socially-engaged theatre practice. Detailed description of people or settings was not part of how those worlds work. On the OU MA, my tutors and fellow students kept asking for detail – Who’s talking? What do they look like? etc.

In my theatre world, when I work as a director, with actors bringing a script to life, I still don’t work on what they look like - though I might be adamant that two steps forward, not three, are what is needed at a particular moment! Choreography and psychology are  aspects that translate into my creative writing - the ‘given circumstances’: Why are they here? What are they trying to get out of this situation? etc. The designer will look after the visuals.

Writing in lockdown in the second year of the MA, I found myself using my beloved places elsewhere – Stamsund in Norway, a series of seafront homes in Ireland – as lifelines in real life, as I looked out on the back wall of a factory in Yorkshire.

Since graduating and retiring from my university post, I have set up home in an apartment at the top of a converted mill, overlooking moorland. I swore that if I was going to be locked up or locked down ever again I had to have a view of nature and sky and distance out the window. It has always been the view out that has mattered – I would spend hours standing, watching the sea, and now watch buzzards, red kites, herons and curlews as they fly over the blackbirds, woodpigeons, magpies and finches living in the gigantic barrier of leylandii shielding the mill from the one house in the neighbouring fields.

 

5.     How would you describe your own writing?

Is eclectic a style? Or even the right word? Short answer is no – I don’t have a particular style. I write for different contexts – performance, teaching, reflection, reading - and the approach tends to overlap, as do the results. I can’t settle into an ‘academic’ format for an article or chapter any more than I can avoid the visual form of a script or poetry when writing prose. I have had very understanding editors – one recently letting me write, for my chapter,  a series of letters to the deceased subject of the (academic) book. The visuals on the page and my own inability to digest or even really see the words in solid blocks of text has made playwriting a safe home for me. The MA with the OU has put some shape on me and my writing but I still tear the edges!

 

6.     Are there certain themes that draw you to them when you are writing?

Memory. The child in the adult. Everyday good neighbourliness. The wit and warmth of everyday people and life. Landscape and the land. Nature. Adventures with and for unlikely people. The wisdom of the elders.

 

7.     Tell us about how you approach your writing. Are you a planner or a pantser?

A pantser, for sure, when it comes to delivering anything on time … and that, in part, is because I find research and connections so engrossing that I can never find the moment to say 'Stop the research and start the writing'! My book of theatre games was written back in the 80s, for drama leaders in Belfast. The Arts Council sent me to Annaghmakerrig, a wonderful and then recently opened artists’ retreat, to make sure it got written! And again, creating a piece of theatre in Ireland over some months, with new research and possibilities explored every week, the actors finally said: ‘ No more new ideas. Go and write the play!'. I remember they went off to the pier (we were in Dun Laoghaire) and came back telling me how they had seen seals … delighted with themselves.

 

8.     Do you have any advice for someone who might be thinking about starting to write creatively?

Start writing. Play with words. Look out the window and let it be someone else looking out of the window. Write that …

Read aloud what you have written, at any time. Don’t wait till it’s ‘finished’ .  Enjoy the sound of words. Notice how some words are like chewing concrete. Avoid them (unless you like chewing concrete). Find the dance of language that pleases you.

Read. Allow the time to be fascinated and distracted by things you have read. Chase the thought or idea that has popped up. Let that lead you to research. Write notes.

You are a mine of information and experience yourself. Reflect on your life. Catch memories, describe places and people and incidents and feelings. Pop them in a safe place ready to be borrowed for an-other story.

If you have the time, inclination and money, maybe do a Creative Writing course. I know it gave me some structure and a group of people who shared my journey as I did theirs.

 

9.     Are you, or have you been in the past, a member of any writing groups, online or face-to-face?

I’m in the 20 20 club. And yes, I do usually run away from any regular commitments or groups.

I tried a U3A online writing group but it was already well-established and the writers were familiar with each other’s work-in-progress. It was a tiny group and I didn’t feel ready to ‘deliver’ new writing every week. I am so glad to have found the 20 20 club though. The members are graduates of the same Creative Writing course I did and the group is run with incredible flexibility, yet structured strongly enough to encourage us to write. I love reading other peoples’ writing and value their reading my scribblings!

 

10. I believe you have an MA in Creative Writing from the Open University. Have you studied creative writing beyond this?

I did an option in Playwriting within the Drama degree I did at Birmingham University. David Edgar was our tutor for the ‘module’ as it would be called now.  [We're thinking of going to Stratford to see David Edgar's play 'The New Real' at the RSC in Oct/Nov -Louise]

 In my own teaching and creative theatre-making I include observation, creative responses to different sparks – a phrase, an object, a place … stories, improvisations, characters etc - not always expressed in words and rarely written down.  That comes later, for those wanting to write. The actors or directors might pick up an existing script or text. A production is a re-writing in a way.

I found the OU MA to be very worthwhile. I would never have marshalled my thoughts and musings into anything for myself before. It was a retirement present from me to me .. to mark the move from a life of putting a shape onto other peoples’ stories for them to present, into speaking for and from myself. I’m still working on clearing the space in my head and my life to be able to do so more completely.

 

                

11. What do you think about getting feedback on your work from other writers and/or non-writers?

Love it. Crucial. With playwriting, the actors give feedback as they work on the script; they know their character well enough to let you know that s/he would or would not speak or respond in the way written.

I regret taking on board the feedback from one of the readers for my second edition of Playing The Game though. She said the first part of the book was too long before she got to the games, so I put the new section on Guardianship after the games. Total mistake. It’s a tiny section and absolutely crucial. Should have been up there at the front. Hey ho... 

In the 20 20 club, I really appreciate the affirmation when someone likes a piece I’ve written. I also really listen to what they say about things they weren’t clear on or comments that show my thread got lost somewhere in the edits. Sometimes, a comment about something that ‘worked’ for someone sparks off a notion for me that can be developed.

 

12. Where do you get your ideas from?

I start writing and see what happens. Then I may start on a description of somewhere I know and put a character in it to see what happens. Why are they there? What might that lead to?

Other ideas crop up from everyday life. I remember once, for example, on my train commute into Dublin from Dun Laoghaire, noticing two container ships out at sea. Ten seconds later, I realized that there were three and that a smaller boat, nearer to us, had blocked the sight of the third one. That popped me straight into Agatha (Christie!) land – the clue, the ability to place when and where according to that angle and those ships.

Sometimes I’ll see an object or people in a place and start the wondering what-if.

It comes from those early story-telling days, I expect – and a life-time of theatre devising, creating a scenario, or an instant improv from the prompt of a word, an object, a place

Then I start researching and things appear like magic that sometimes become the main focus. I like multi-layered writing – simple and striking enough to carry the reader along but with a richness of connections and resonances that make re-reading rewarding in its own right. 

 

13. They say that successful writers need to be selfish. How far do you agree with this? 

Well – I wouldn’t know, and it depends what you mean by selfish. My published

work has been commissioned non-fiction and my main challenge is always the 

marshalling of time and attention towards actually writing to a deadline - resisting 

the call of diving into new angles and aspects. I am enjoying creative writing as 

opposed to the academic world, because I don’t feel that same sense of dread at the 

notion of putting something out into the world that I disagree with the very next 

day. I learn all the time and fiction is a kinder, more flexible, place from which to

speak.

I have known some successful writers, though, some of whom were drama students when I taught them, having a life as a theatre actor before turning to full-time writing. I wouldn’t call them selfish in the self-centred sense of the word. But determined and self-disciplined, yes.

 

14. Beyond your family and your writing, what other things do you do?

I live on the Dales Way and the area is beautiful. I walk for about an hour every day with a neighbour – alongside the river Wharfe, to the village and back usually.

I love preparing my daily meals – the same every day, until I get bored and try something new. Chopping and grating vegetables has always been a way to step back from the business of the day and ground myself.

My theatre-making is now a hobby as opposed to my profession, and I am working on a Brontë project at my local little theatre. I’ll be directing Polly Teale’s play Brontë next May and am working with the Brontë parsonage on some linked events in the leadup to that. In fact, I would say that the Brontës are my hobby and preoccupation right now. I’m reading their novels, following all the online material from fans and experts – who add wonderful stuff every day.

I am in a U3A (University of the 3^rd Age) choir – ‘singing for pleasure’ - which meets one morning a week - I can’t commit to evening things – and I am loving it. My mother was very involved in choral and I’ve never been in one place regularly enough to make the commitment.

Auctions – this started by looking for a writing slope for Brontë. I now have five, together with a new hobby – the weekly auction! Peruse the catalogue on Friday evening, view at the auction house Monday or Tuesday, bid online on Wednesday, collect Thursday or Friday .. and begin again .. I love it!

As kids we used to help my gran to clean and polish all the items donated for the bric-a-brac stall at the church Xmas bazaar or the community centre fair. My dad and grandad collected furniture at weekends and redistributed it to ‘needy families’ for a church charity .. and I furnished my homes in Ireland from a local auction house.

 

15. Would you describe yourself as a ‘cultured’ person?

I wouldn’t use the word 'cultured' – makes me think of pearls and petri dishes – but, yes, I am someone who goes to the theatre (mind you, it has been my life for 50 years so no surprise there). I listen to audiobooks every day – when I am preparing my meals, washing up, cleaning or sorting laundry, and sometimes when I can’t sleep!

I don’t have a tv and rarely listen to the radio. I used to listen to radio 4, a habit developed when living with my parents in my fifties – the news, current affairs and The Archers were the daily fare. For me, it is the dear departed Michael Moseley’s ‘Just One Thing’ and occasional Desert Island Discs. I find The Archers too shouty now, as are many news programmes – I can’t stand people shouting in my kitchen!

When living with my dad, after mum died, I would watch a detective drama on tv with him most nights after the evening meal. I don’t watch horror and I don’t like graphic anything, so it would be Morse, Lewis, Foyle’s War, Midsummer Murders or any of the Agatha Christie series. There was another one – was it Inspector Montelbano - set in Cornwall – beautiful scenery… Back to place again! I’m sure it was the excuse to see Oxford that made Morse and Lewis so watchable.

I rarely go to concerts, apart from the occasional choral event from local choirs. I used to listen to classical music though – Byrd’s masses come to mind in particular.

My main reading – via the audio books – is Agatha Christie. I am more than a fan, having spoken at conferences and visited the festival in Torquay. I love what I know of her as a person, her childhood games and imaginary friends - and I love her incredible understanding of how prejudice manifests in so many tiny daily ways towards so many variations of someone-who-is-not-me!

I go to films – at a tiny local cinema with about 40 seats! They have a daytime ‘Silver Screening’ of each of the standard films. It’s for over-60s and you get a complimentary cuppa and piece of cake – on a plate!! 

 

16. Are you interested in history and if so does it impact on your writing?

Dramaturgy – research relevant to a particular play - is a normal part of approaching another writer’s script, as a theatre director. As a writer of plays with and for other people, I’ve always researched history and sometimes mythology and legends linked to the characters, places and stories that make up the initial ‘layer’. For example, researching the blitz in Belfast for the Dockward Story in the early 90s was fascinating. Irish myths and legend provided a dimension to give distance and depth to the here and now. Also, the living history – the stories of older people and of everyday life and the extraordinariness of it, the mill girls and the dockers.

 

17. How did the Covid pandemic affect you as a writer?

I live alone. The screen became a location in my daily life – the world of Zoom meetings, Zoom classes, Zoom theatre workshops. So it also became a location for my writing at that time, which was for the MA. Writing became an escape for me but the physical action of typing, scrolling, etc, wrecked my wrists – I have a wrist support now. It also gave me so much time for thought, for remembering, for using what had been, in the absence of any regular people-watching, travel or human contact in the lockdown daily life.

 

18. There is a lot of talk at the moment. in the publishing world and elsewhere, about political correctness, the Woke movement, cultural appropriation, ‘cancel culture’, ‘trigger warnings’, sensitivity readers and the importance of diversity. What are your thoughts on this, with regard to writing?

This is an important one.

If a writer can spend years researching period detail for an historical novel, why not expect me to research cultural detail for anything I have not lived myself. There’s always fantasy as a way of exploring and presenting the world through the distancing lens of an-other place, time, reality.

With community plays, the collaborators and the audience have lived the experience you are writing with them. You’re looking to create a story to hold their stories and it has to ring true because they are on stage and in the audience. In the Dockward Story, for example, I needed a reason why a young lad (17 yrs old) was going round to his grandparents. Their stories about the area were the heart of the play, but we needed to find a believable reason for telling them. In a workshop with local people of all ages, they were asked to work in pairs to improvise a meeting between two friends – one of whom dare not go home and is telling their trusted friend the reason. We then gathered round and everyone said what they had come up with. Situations ranged from drinking or smoking (parent will smell the drink/smoke), going out with a soldier (someone saw them), been throwing petrol bombs (smell of petrol on them), saw someone they know throw a blast bomb (the person saw them and will come after them – as will the security forces), joyriding in a stolen car and knocked someone down.

We then asked which was most believable as reason to not go home. The joyride? Will that make our audience sympathise with the young fella when he goes to his gran’s? NO – they’ll think he deserves all he gets. So are there any of the scenarios which would carry the audience’s sympathy? Yes. Seeing someone you know throw a blaster. He didn’t do it, but he’s in danger from all sides coming to silence him or make him speak. So that’s what I wrote – since I was writing the scene where he comes bursting into his grandparents' house.

In my own writing, I can ask myself what I am wanting to put across and whether there is more than one way of doing so.

Sometimes you just need it pointed out – which is the benefit of sharing ideas and drafts with people, and staying up-to-date with issues around language, content etc, in the publishing world.

 

19. Where would you place your own writing, on a continuum with PURE FANTASY at one end and COMPLETE REALISM at the other?

I write both fiction and non-fiction. In my fiction, including playwriting,  I lend my reality – places, people, circumstances to the story. I would love to take the time to develop a fantasy world where the known and the real are given that distance from which they can really speak. I went through a phase, years ago, of reading children’s literature – young adult as it is called – because I loved how grand themes and philosophies could find their place within the dressing up land of imagined worlds. Maybe one day …

 

 

20. Do you have any particular health or other issue that affects your writing and if so how have you overcome this?

In terms of physical health, the thing which has caused most problems since – and during – lockdown in 2020, is some sort of repetitive strain injury I get from typing on my 10 inch tablet screen and keyboard. I now wear a wrist support which allows me to manage an hour or so but completing assignments for the OU MA in lockdown was agony. The fact that my physical research materials were in Dublin, whilst I was locked down in Yorkshire didn’t help, as I had to use online library material in place of my actual books, so scrolling through pages and pages exacerbated the whole thing. My ‘proper’ computer was in Dublin.

I have now discovered the joys of audio books. No hands involved!

Poor eyesight, combined with no self-discipline when it comes to screen time, leads to sore and aching eyes, but I’m sure I’m not alone on that one. 

My main challenges are to do with time and organization, combined with prevarication, perfectionism, absent-mindedness, hyper-distractibility and a wish to be invisible! Since retirement, in absence of stage managers, administrators, project schedules and timetables, I am at sea most of the time and having to learn ways of managing myself – from lists and diary, through to switching off electric appliances as soon as they have boiled, spun dry or charged, and having a post-it note next to the front door telling me to turn off the water and close the windows! This is, I now learn, poor ‘executive function’ and I have discovered I have had ADHD all my life. I’m not sure that name existed back then but the online (again) support and resources I now have are wonderful. An American magazine ADDitude is my main go to – webinars and insightful, useful articles. My doctor gave me a reading list of actual books as well. Aren’t writers wonderful 😊

 

21. If you have anything else you’d like to tell us, not covered by these questions, feel free to add it here.

I’m late as usual, verbose as usual and head spinning from all the questions – so best I stop now!

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Thank you very much, Chrissie, for such a detailed and insightful showcase. 

******

 

In September, I will be showcasing 

another fabulous writer: 

Adele Sullivan.

Not to be missed!

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So far in this series, I’ve showcased the following writers: 

Ruth Loten – March 2023

Jane Langan – March 2023

Beck Collett – April 2023

Ron Hardwick – June 2023

L.N.Hunter – July 2023

Katherine Blessan – August 2023

Jill Saudek – September 2023

Colin Johnson – October 2023

Sue Davnall – November 2023

Alain Li Wan Po – December 2023

Lily Lawson – January 2024

Philip Badger – February 2024

Glen Lee – March 2024

DHL Hewa - April 2024

Tonia Trainer - May 2024

Mike Poyzer – June 2024

Judith Worham - July 2024

Chrissie Poulter - August 2024

You can find all these showcases by scrolling back through the material on this blog.

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