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| Reviews/quotes |
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'very warm, very inviting, very mysterious poetry. Chrissie has a very tender sight,'
Moniza Alvi 'an important, imaginative, totally original contribution to modern poetry,' Sheila Hancock 'She is a gifted writer,' Patricia Routledge 'Chrissie Gittins knows just what words can do: she makes them dance, sing, sit still for a moment and then leap across the page with joy!' Ian McMillan 'a lot of ripe good ones,' John Hegley 'A striking play ... deftly written,' Kate Kellaway, The Observer 'most of (her stories) carry an insidiously discomforting charge,' Nicholas Clee, The Guardian 'For gentle but often surreal language, little people should sit cross-legged on the carpet with a copy of Chrissie Gittins's latest poetry collection,' Helen Brown, The Telegraph ‘a true original … she has a genuine gift,’ Jane Yeh, Poetry Review |
| ‘a wonderful collection,’
Jon Snow |
| ‘a voice refusing to be pinned down,’
Moniza Alvi |
| ‘a great sense of humour, an ear for what life sounds like,’
Helen Dunmore |
| ‘weird, interesting and humorous poems that will bear repeated visits,’
Roger Stevens, Poetry Zone website |
| ‘a McGough-like flair for idiomatic surrealism,’
Michael Thorn, TES |
| ‘I very much enjoyed reading your collection of children’s poetry,’
Estelle Morris |
| ‘I thought you read beautifully'
Michael Stewart, Director Huddersfield Literature Festival. |
| Home | Poetry | Children's Poetry | Short Stories | Radio | Dates |
PoetryChrissie has read her poetry at the Royal Festival Hall, the British Council Bangkok, Manchester Central Library, Keats’ House Hampstead, Newcastle, Kingston and Salford Universities, the Troubadour Coffee House, the Poets House and the Bowery Poetry Club in New York, the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival, the Ilkley Literature Festival, the Edinburgh Book Festival and the Hay Festival.
In it Chrissie dresses in the guise of the grandson of Hitler’s bodyguard, Samuel Pepys’s mistress, the lover of Shakespeare’s youngest brother, and the cook at a lavish dinner held in the belly of a model dinosaur. What undercuts these evocations of vivid living is the certain knowledge of death. How does Alcyone survive without her beloved husband? How does Triptolemus feel on his deathbed knowing that eternal life was once within his reach? These poems try to replace what is lost, or about to be lost, with the laying down of memory etched by the imagination. The book includes three sequences. The title sequence is a tender lament for her mother. The second, called ‘Cloth’, tells of Mary Hindle – a woman involved in the machine breakers riots in East Lancashire in 1826.The third, ‘Herbal Source’, welds stories to the anonymous words listed on a pavement sign outside a Chinese herbalist. The 'Cloth' sequence was accepted by Les Murray for publication in Quadrant magazine in Australia. Others poems from this collection have been published in magazines including THE SHOp (Ireland), Envoi, Other Poetry, The Poetry Paper, Jacket (Australia) Orbis, Mslexia, and in the anthology Works 4 (Macmillan). Magma published four poems in their Spring 2009 issue. ‘Gittins’s deadpan tone and skewed perspective mark her out as a true original … Gittins characterizes her speakers through disjunctive, seemingly random pronouncements that manage to betray their vulnerability, longing and frustration – she has a genuine gift’ JANE YEH, Poetry Review ‘her poems are well-sculpted, fine-boned, painterly and precise. Reflective as well as outward-looking, she writes vividly about the everyday as well as less familiar lives and places. Lively, accessible and gently surprising, hers is a voice refusing to be pinned down’ MONIZA ALVI ‘I love the way (the poems) build on observations; piling them up until, without hardly knowing it, there’s a revelation that really lifts the top of your head off ’ VICKI FEAVER ‘an ear for what life sounds like, and … there’s so much feeling in the poems. But it’s never got that heavy, spongy quality that emotion can have if it’s not handled right. It’s precise’ HELEN DUNMORE
Reviews: In this collection, the poet assumes a variety of personae and the initial interest lies in the choices she makes. These are people from history, but on the periphery of great events or times rather than the figures at the centre. ‘The Man Who Carries a Picture of Hitler’ concerns the grandson of Hitler’s bodyguard, the picture in his wallet ‘face to face with a shot of my son’. ‘Mr Pepys’s Inclination’ sees the poet writing as Pepys’s mistress – ‘If ever there was a euphemism, I was it’ and, in another odd remove, ‘Chorister, St. Saviour’s Church, Southwark, 1607’, introduces the lover of Shakespeare’s younger brother Edmund. Within this collection, there are three sequences; the title sequence is a moving account of life in the wake of a mother’s death. The second ‘Cloth’, adopts the persona of a woman deported to Australia following political protests in 1826. The third, ‘Herbal Source’, is inspired by ‘a list on a pavement sign outside a shop selling Chinese medicine’. The collection is full of surprises, and some useful notes at the back help the reader with more abstruse references, such as England’s first weatherman and the man who held a dinner for twenty-one in the belly of an iguanodon – a thoroughly enjoyable collection. FRANK STARTUP, The School Librarian, Volume 57, Number 3, Autumn 2009 ‘I’ll Dress One Night as You’ is a no-nonsense book, and the title sequence is about her mother’s ageing, ailing and death. It is a superb piece of writing, full of convincing details of landscape, flowers, clothes, makeup. The sixth and last poem perfectly rounds off the series of glimpses we are given into the end of a life: You’re in the scenes that play Inside my head which show me What you were – the light fantastic Of your love, which makes me spin And dare to dip my finger In the jar of life, The half I’ll live for you. Gittins’s poems are full of telling details. Sometimes the details don’t tell enough to add up to the whole that she intends, but often their very understatedness pays off. She’s particularly good at then sequence, and there’s a second good one here – ‘Cloth’, which recounts the life of Mary Hindle, born in Haslingden, Lancs, worked on the looms, took part in the machine-breaking riots of 1826, and was convicted and transported to Australia, where, separated from her husband and children, she committed suicide. There is nothing mawkish in these six poems, but the first person narrative lets us into Mary’s life sufficiently to identify with her. Here she is in prison awaiting deportation: What I want is my husband’s shoulder, my hand sliding round his cheek, his mouth finding mine, the heat of our bodies confounding the cool night air. Instead I’m in this vicious sleeping room, dank and dark as a vixen’s lair. Many other poems here are monologues, but there are also a number in the poet’s voice. I prefer these, and there is a particularly telling one about sharing with a sibling the task of clearing their home after the death of both parents (Crab Apples’) and, most affecting of all, the most direct expression here of the theme which underlies most of this collection – that of mortality; this poem shares its title with the first line, and here is the first verse: Say something to me of life – that it is not random like a stray celandine setting seed in the middle of a lawn, that one pre-heartbeat babe has just as much chance of growing up to skip rope as any other. JOHN KILLICK, The North, 44, Winter 2009 Chrissie Gittins speaks in the voice of a cook who fed the dinner guests in the belly of a model iguanodon created by a Victorian palaeontologist. She regrets that Mary Anning, who collected so many of the bones the eminent men enthused over, went unhonoured. Mary, though, is done justice by Chrissie’s later poem ‘Lifeline’ where she is imagined alongside a drowned woman telling her ‘your bones are made from beauty’. A lot of the poems are in voices other than the poet’s. The sequence ‘Cloth’, told by a woman deported for her part in the Luddite riots of 1826 is a tour de force. The opening (title) sequence of the book is an understated elegy for her mother and the changing tones, from sweet to fierce, make a truly outstanding set. ANN DRYSDALE, Envoi, Issue 154, October 2009 ‘Leaving Brancaster Staithe’ sets the tone: confident, accessible, precisely observed (geese fly ‘in lazy V’s, settle on a wintry marsh ‘like iron filings/over a starched white tablecloth’); it merges the outer landscape, the geese with ‘heads held down’, the slowly draining light, with an inner landscape whose drama of anxiety and loss is condensed in the memorably simple last line ‘and this time I knew you would die’. This poem is one of the title sequence of poems commemorating the poet’s mother. Carefully wrought, anchoring emotion in details whose poignancy is allowed to speak for itself, with just the occasional dip into obviousness (the ‘buds slowly opening’ in Mothering Sunday’), this sequence epitomizes a fine collection. In her imagination Chrissie Gittins not only dresses as her mother but wears other, less familiar personae: Alcyone, Mary Hindle (a tragic textile worker transported for abetting machine-breakers), the grandson of Hitler’s chauffeur. She shows a striking ability to inhabit their stories, at her best when leading our imagination on through details so vividly realised we are enmeshed in a scene and its implications before we know it. She has a gift for surprising readers through a lively sense of the absurd (see the series inspired by a list of Chinese herbal medicines, the description of a dinner held in the belly of a model dinosaur). Her poems are most telling when seemingly most simple. ‘Letter to My Husband’ opens with ‘I hope these few lines find you well’, ending with the equally plain, equally moving ‘Eighteen thousand miles is the distance I am from you,’ a real voice, really suffering. In ‘The Man Who Carries A Picture of Hitler’ the single detail ‘The crown of Hitler’s head brushes/the bottom lip of my five year old’ opens the poem out in unsettling directions, like the compelling image of death in ‘Say Something To Me Of Life’, ‘a doorbell/ringing and ringing in the middle of the day’. There is more to these poems than meets the eye. A.C.CLARKE, Markings, Issue 30, April 2010 The title comes from a sequence about mourning a mother; in the poem "Out Of Place" the bereaved speaker envisages putting on the dead woman's clothes and habits: I'll dress one night as you, wear your weighty beads and bracelet, I'll stretch my lips across my teeth, half open my mouth, apply red lipstick in a compact mirror It's an appropriate title image, because much of this collection is about putting on the voice and personality of others - a former bodyguard of Hitler, a 17th-century chorister who also acts in Shakespeare, Samuel Pepys's mistress. Sometimes too the alter egos are from the myth-kitty, as in "Alcyone" and "Triptolemus". I'm not among those who are turned off by the mere mention of Greek myth; it seems a perfectly valid source of material as long as the poet recognises that it has been extensively mined already and needs something new doing with it. In "Triptolemus" we see the man cheated of the gift of immortality as a baby, now on his deathbed and massively grateful for not having had to outlive his own children - a good twist on the myth, I think. I've always liked voice poems because they give the poet a certain distance from material that might otherwise become sentimental, also because it seems weird to be a writer and not take advantage of the freedom it gives you to get into someone else's skin. In "The Carpet Fitter's Wife", this fondness for shape-shifting combines with an interest in vocabulary: a married couple's relationship becomes defined by their respective idiolects, his as a carpet fitter, hers as a maths teacher: Our congruent bodies lie parallel, an owl calls from the coppice, he holds me firm like gripper rod. Another sequence, about a woman transported to Australia, works well. Of course the thing about voice poems is that the voice needs to convince throughout; if "Chorister, St Saviour's Church, Southwark, 1607" works less well for me it is because I can't hear a 17th-century voice saying "his lips were mink on mine", given that mink weren't introduced into Britain until about 1920. Granted, their fur could have been imported earlier, but it can't have been widely known, and it just seems unlikely to have been among this speaker's references. The other main theme of this collection is bereavement, and on the vocabulary and minutiae of loss she is very sharp - "the back of everyone's head is you" ("Around Thaxted"). The poem which sticks with me most, though, is another about the place of fictional vocabularies in life, "She Gave Me Her Childhood Books, in which fiction becomes a talisman for children against reality: on a cold stone wall in the playground we're joined by the King of Peru who falls down a well and comforts himself with a rhyme. The bell sounds for lessons, we fetch up in a line. Beside us loiters a row of ducks, an old sailor, a knight with quiet armour. When keys are thrown at chatty Colin the knight shields the blow If I were feeling picky, I might object that actually he deflects the blow, or shields Colin from it, but the idea behind the words is one most of us could relate to. Gittins has in fact worked a great deal with children, but this collection shows her as a poet adults can certainly enjoy as well. SHEENAGH PUGH, Live Journal, May 2011 www.sheenaghpugh.livejournal.com Restless intelligence and a distinctive voice characterise this collection of shifty perspectives and disturbing juxtapositions. A triumph. PETER BENNET, Other Poetry, Series Four, No.4, Autumn 2011 Comments: 'I have been especially impressed by the way in which Chrissie is able to write poems that fuse the intelligence of the idea with patterns of speech that never jar one against the other. I like the economy of the writing, spare but never terse, and, a rare thing indeed, the absence of redundant adjectives. Great last lines too.The parallel with Duffy comes to mind but she does something so different with her material.' Simon Pugh, retired lecturer Central St Martin's 'an important, imaginative, totally original contribution to modern poetry.' Sheila Hancock 'I'll Dress One Night as You approaches its readers with a deftness of touch that belies its ability to create images that linger long after the book itself has been closed. Chrissie Gittins' subject matter stirs our own emotions and offers us insightful reflections on past lives.' Sir Steve Bullock, Mayor of Lewisham 
'I've enjoyed the new book so much. It's so rich, I'll be rereading it soon, and I'm sure I'll be uncovering new treasures..... At present my favourite is the 'Cloth' sequence, but this could change...' John Killick Poems online: 'Mr Pepys’s Inclination', magma poetry online Three poems from the 'Herbal Source' sequence, Jacket 37, Australia Articles: Dinosaurs, riots and avocados - poems from Forest Hill, Dulwich On Line Interview with Lewisham Life, May 2009 South London Press: Top poet inspired by shop signs (May 2009) 
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Praise for Armature‘Chrissie Gittins’s poems are elegant, sensual and deep. They are a joy to read first time round – and to revisit,’ Kate Kellaway, poetry editor, The Observer.
‘it is the poetry of collisions, of the meeting of madness and sanity, of different experiences of an identical moment, of what is exact and what is elusive. These poems are moving; they achieve a degree of pathos that gives them authority. There are poems about Italy and Spain and Scotland, about magnolias and mountains and Elizabeth Taylor's nose, about the Yalding floods of 2000 and the thoughts of a convict. There are all sorts of voices, too: Psyche, an eldest child, Santa Teresa's hand, a medievalist, an iguana. There's also flexibility of approach: a jolly surreal episode with origami in a railway train; a sharply entertaining Table of Kindred and Affinity. This is not a light-hearted collection, except incidentally; it's pretty serious poetry, by a serious professional. There's variety and interest here, and an artistic sensibility alert to the contradictions and possibilities of experience.’ Dr Rosie Bailey, Envoi 138, Summer 2004. ‘The juxtapositions and tonal shifts that characterize the poems in Armature find a balance and profundity here that are exceptionally effective. Yet while it is a book with many shades of light and dark throughout, its strength resides in the way each can be seen to inhabit the other.’ Dr John Ballam www.suite101.com ‘Chrissie Gittins’s collection, Armature, holds a series of delicate dementia poems. The first opens in heart-breaking mid-sentence with a non-sequitural ‘but a lemon hangs from the branch in the conservatory.’ (‘Today Is Friday, The Season Is Winter, The Weather Is Cold’). In other sections of Armature, a book of parts, she writes extremely well from the perspective of a child, and excels at the psychologically revealing. Her evocation of the world of a Karenni refugee in Thailand and Britain is delicate and moving, particularly in the more personal poems. Judy Kendall, PN Review 158, Summer 2004. ‘She writes with tenderness and care, an ear for speech and a strong sense of empathy. My favourite poems in this collection were a series about an elderly relative. In these poems she documents both the physical changes and the less perceptible changes, as in ‘Pilot’. All the poems are full of images, colour and vitality. They leap from voice to voice and are at times surprising, with unexpected juxtapositions, or occasional, bizarre images. Her strength throughout the book is that at the heart of each poem is a person, a relationship, some insight into the human condition. The variety of her choice of subject and her lively style makes this an enjoyable read. Sally Baker, The North 34, July 2004. This volume consists of forty-two poems framed by two collections which have previously been published in pamphlet form, ‘Pilot’ and ‘A Path of Rice’. ‘Pilot’ deals movingly with the physical and mental decline of an elderly parent. Matter-of-fact statements – ‘there are things I must realise you can no longer do’ – combine with some fine imagery and lines which reflect upon the poet’s feelings when faced with this situation. The detail is well observed, and the writing balances the realities of the situation with its implications delicately. The theme is picked up and extended in ‘A Path of Rice’ when, in Thailand, the poet finds ‘I am my father/our freckles fuse’, and her experiences are bound up with his war experiences, the whole marked by subtle shifts between poetic and demotic language which is stimulating and effective. In between the pamphlets, the poems are marked by a variety of location and mood. The description of place, particularly landscapes, is vivid and sensual, while the warmth of some of the imagery in some poems in punctuated by sudden and surprising violence or explicitly sexual imagery in others. The collection is varied in mood and emphasis, and rewards close reading. Frank Startup, The School Librarian, Autumn 2004. Chrissie Gittins writes vividly about the everyday as well as less familiar lives and places – notably Thailand, where she has travelled extensively. ‘There is no striving for effect, but much to enjoy and admire in this fresh and unusually natural first collection.’ (Moniza Alvi) PBS BULLETIN, Number 198, Autumn 2003 Armature is the debut collection of Chrissie Gittins. The poems are located in the North of England and the Orient, their habitat extends to old people’s homes, The British Museum and a refugee camp. The thing that takes us between these worlds is Gittins’s relationship with her father, a recording of their relationship in his final months, her memories of him and her imaginings of his life. Her reconstructions of his wartime experiences are startling, ambitious in every way a poem should be. I like these poems because they tackle that big no-no, sentimentality. For me, poems are all about intellect meeting emotion and it seems to me that poets who don’t risk writing about love or anything that involves an intensity of feeling are only going to produce bland and banal writing. Lucky for us, Gittins doesn’t flinch. Gittins’s ear for dialogue is good, which enhances the characters in her work. There is a northerness to the poems, they are honest, unpretentious, no garnish. I’m impressed with the simplicity of the poems, and the trust Gittins has in herself. One of the biggest dilemmas is, how do you write poems that are as intelligent as you want them to be without losing a lot of readers by being too clever? The answer is, partly, by trying to say something complicated in very simple terms. It is to Gittins’s credit that she is very successful at this. The poems say what they mean, I mean they are exact, precise, they don’t pussyfoot around or beat around the bush. They remain focussed and succinct. I find this extremely refreshing because it is so surprisingly rare. I like the way the family is the cornerstone of the book, there are poems about her father, her mother. There are carefully balanced poems about the rearing of her own children, (or the rearing of the narrator’s children). It’s good to read poetry about the family unit, about those small acts of kindness that we perform daily because we love, and that you wouldn’t believe existed if you believed soap opera world. I very much look forward to forthcoming collections by Chrissie Gittins. It’s her unflinching and unapologetic tackling of emotional concerns that, in my book, makes Armature a success. PETER KNAGGS, The Slab 2, 2005 | |||||
As well as her adult poems Chrissie is also a very successful published and broadcast writer in other fields as well, with short stories which are quite frequently broadcast on BBC Radio Four, children’s poems which have won prizes, and radio plays; and this is not to mention her talents as an artist and a gardener. So I don’t know if there’s a special word for someone with all these talents, but Chrissie is hugely talented.
