Chrissie Gittins Now you see her, now you... Welcome to The Poetry Zone, Chrissie. So, to begin, when did you start writing? About twelve years ago. Though I remember keeping a series of notebooks when I was a teenager. It was like having a conversation. And I loved writing at school. I had a lovely English teacher who would read out what she thought were the good pieces we had written. It was such a thrill if she read yours out. Why do you write poetry? It's succinct and it goes to the heart of the matter. It's like a tree strung with lots of blinking lights. Each light or poem can be about something different and can have a different tone or mood, but they all help to light up the whole. Twister Hamster Twister sleeps in the day, Esther sleeps at night. Esther wakes in the morning, gives Twister quite a fright by poking her finger at Twister who bites her thumb real hard. Esther now has a plaster. And she pulls away her finger a bit faster Do you write anything other than poetry? I write short stories and radio drama. I'm working on a commissioned play for BBC Radio Four just now. It's about a particularly gruesome sideshow on the Golden Mile in Blackpool in 1934. It will be broadcast over the October half term - at 2-15pm on Friday 25th October. Do you write for adults? Yes. My short stories and plays are for adults, and I write poems for adults too. What books have you written? My new collection of children's poems is just out. It's called Now you See, Me Now You … . They're poems written over the last ten years - about a wild tortoise from Turkey who becomes a pet in Catford; a boy who buys a budgie when he absolutely wanted a canary; a girl who can make coins come out of her belly button; a Dad who disappears into the garage and beyond; poems which poke fun at punctuation; and a poem about child slavery in the eighteenth century. It's illustrated by a wonderful Norwegian illustrator - Gunnlaug Moen Hembery - who lives in Bristol. I found her website on the internet and loved her work as soon as I saw it. It turned out she was just about to have a baby, but she managed to fit in illustrating the book and finished the drawings just a few days before her son was born. How long does it take to write a poem? It can vary. An American poet called Elizabeth Bishop once took fifteen years to write a poem. For me it can be half an hour for the first draft then a few days or a few weeks before it feels right. What is the most unusual event that has inspired you to write a poem? This wasn't a particularly unusual beginning, but I guess that's the way with lots of poems - ordinary things can become extraordinary. I was waiting in the playground with my niece and some of her friends for the day to start. It was winter and freezing cold. We wondered what it would be like if a man walked by locked in a block of ice - and so The Ice Man was born. How do you write your poems? I start writing on used paper which has been printed on one side and attach it to my pink plastic clipboard. The clipboard has sentimental value and the used paper stops me feeling too precious about writing. I write two or three drafts and then commit to the computer for further drafts. Which is the most unusual school that you've visited? I visited a school next to Loch Ness - called Aldourie. The headteacher was called Mrs Macbeth. The school was tiny and another school came from across the mountains to join us - from a place called Farr! At the end of the day one of the children left their jumper behind. Another child smelled it to work out whose jumper it was. He got it right! Possible Presents The lick of a tall ice cream and the first burnt nose of summer. The jumper which shrunk in the wash back to its usual size. A bowl of red tulips which curl up their petals at night. A camouflaged frog jumping between caramel leaves. Bread baked this morning spread with Somerset butter. The blackbird which sings in the tree each day at a quarter to four Have you been on the TV or radio? I was on Sky TV when they filmed National Poetry Day at the Poetry Library a few years ago. And I've been on BBC Radio Four's Poetry Please programme, and on the World Service. I found myself 'hijacked' by a tour guide in northern Thailand and taken to see a refugee camp on the Thai/Burma border. They were Karenni refugees from Burma. I then did a 'From Our Own Correspondent' kind of slot about them for the World Service. Of all the poems you've written, which is your favourite? At the moment I'm very fond of The Powder Monkey because it won me the Belmont Poetry Prize! It's about a boy who goes to sea in the seventeen hundreds at a very young age. I heard about powder monkeys - the boys who used to supply the cannons with gunpowder - from a friend who visited the Golden Hind in Portsmouth. Since I don't live very far from Greenwich I was able to do some research at the Maritime Museum Library. Needless to say I was delighted when it won the poems for 9-12 year olds category in the Belmont competition - especially since children choose the winning poems. What advice would you give to young poets? I'd give you the advice that my first writing tutor gave me. 'You can write and not be a writer, but you can't be a writer and not write!' Also join a library and read everything you can lay your hands on.   Visit Chrissie's Website www.chrissiegittins.co.uk Now You See Me Now You... by Chrissie Gittins can be ordered from the publisher. Send a cheque for £4.99 plus 50p (p+p) to Rabbit Hole Productions 24 Elsinore Road Forest Hill London SE23 2SL UK or ask at your local bookshop quoting ISBN 0-9543288-0-9   and I'll have two chocolate whoppers, please