Chrissie Gittins

About Chrissie Gittins

This is poetry that does what it talks about. A poem about a hamster in a ball that rolls on, and rolls on… A poem about a wasp in which the words hum. Listen to ‘Wasp on the Tube’ to hear the hum!

Chrissie Gittins uses a very wide range of forms and poetic devices – lists and limericks, narrative and nursery rhymes, shape poems and songs. There’s also a very wide range of subjects. Many of her poems are quirky or absurd. But wrapped up in the wordplay are some sharp-eyed observations – as in ‘Three’.

If you open one of Chrissie’s books, you will see the very wide variety of poem styles just by looking at the shapes on the page. Perhaps because she was an artist, the way a poem looks on a page is very important to Chrissie. She often uses line length to create a particular effect.