I have been writing poems since my teens and have been performing them for the last three years at various venues in Sussex and Kent.
As well as solo performances I also perform regularly with an international group of female performance poets called 'The Writing Sisters Collective’
http://www.myspace.com/writingsisterscollective1
My full anthology thus far is available here:
http://www.poemhunter.com/petra-creffield
I am also a photographer to see my portfolio site 'Sense Of Place’ click here:
http://web.mac.com/petracreffield
You can also find more poetry and pictures here:
http://www.myspace.com/petracreffield
The following poem has become a kind of trademark poem and the one I have performed the most live. I hope you enjoy.
Px
Am I a Witch or a Bitch?
Make you come when I call
Push you away when I fall
Give all of my heart in the night
Run for the hills in the daylight
Tell me sweetie
Am I a witch or a bitch?
Cast my deep red sensual spells
Put you through strange kinds of hell
Demand your heart open to me
Keep mine hidden where you cannot see
Tell me honey
Am I a witch or a bitch?
Conjure you up into the iconic one
Cast you down as eternal demon
Pull you close to my breast
Slap away your need for rest
Tell me bunny
Am I a witch or a bitch?
Yapping around with my need to please
Then my cold heart leaves you on your knees
My body and heart open wide to you
Then suddenly there is no way through
Am I a witch or a bitch?
Tell me darling which?
Petra Creffield On Writing 2006
Sometimes I refuse to write, am quite sure writing is bad for me,
Each word, sentence, paragraph feels like it’s fixing me down
Anchoring my experience into it’s description of the experience
Which is not and never can be, the experience itself.
It can only ever be a description, or rather, a perception of the experience.
Which I know is limited, as it must be, as limited as my personal history dictates. Therefore it feels like the words hold me down, to a fixed and unchanging view.
We are held to our words, especially when one takes the time to write them down. I have splurged them out, in crazy attempts to catharsise my soul of every dark shadow. But I don’t want to be held by them, suffocated in their grip, everything is always in flux, especially my feelings.
Today the poem I would write about you, will be completely different to the one I would have wrote about you yesterday. Both would be equally true and sincere. Yet each one transitory, a feeling felt in the moment, shifted by the slightest breeze into yet another form.
I write them because I have to, to get my own head around myself, to try and make sense of the chaos and clog in my mind. The writing forces this chaos into lines that are straight, coherent and if I am lucky poetic. They allow me a distance from the experience, they provide a way to navigate the changes and events in my life, by allowing me to step back. The words simply have to come at times, and always will, in whatever form.
As much as I may rebel against them, feel shy of having them read by others, I will continue to write them, of this I am sure. At least that is until I am physically unable to write and even then I would find someone to dictate to.
I have to get them out you see, they demand and shout to be externalized and I will continue to honor their call.
I hope you dear readers. enjoy the following feelings squeezed into lines and with any luck, find something of yourself reflected there.
Thanks for watching
Px
