Chérie Battiste is a West Yorkshire-based poet, playwright and performer. She has contributed to the Festival over the years as a performance poet, interviewer and workshop tutor. Here, she talks about her work with the Festival and how it has helped with her career development.
My first role with HuddLitFest was an online discussion with the poets Kei Miller and Michelle Scally Clarke, during a Covid lockdown. Being online for events was new to us all. But it was a joy, which reminded me that 15 years of facilitating workshops was a valuable asset.
Then I was asked to interview authors, which for a recovering perfectionist was very daunting. And when I interviewed the actor and writer Paterson Joseph, on his newly published novel The Secret Diaries of Ignatius Sancho, for two hybrid events (with a live and a remote audience), my anxiety driven, copious multi-colored notes came second to the instant rapport and passion we both shared for the themes in the book.
This led to Paterson inviting me to perform live at Greenwich Maritime Museum, as the character Anne, Sancho’s wife, in full period costume. Which itself led to us doing some very intensive R&D for another project.
Developing creative projects, from poetry and acting to music and film
Alongside this, the Festival Director Michelle Hodgson, had asked if I’d had any project ideas. And I had shared the idea of making a poetry film, using my poem about the story of David Oluwale, in collaboration with the musician Omar Lyefook MBE.
In tandem, I did a workshop at Holmfirth High School, on the same theme, which went wonderfully and led to some brilliant poetry from the young people involved. Since then, Holmfirth High School has invited me to be their Poetry Society Patron, and I have continued to facilitate workshops. I am also commencing mentoring.
So to launch HuddLitFest in 2023, with the Mayor of Huddersfield in attendance, I performed a poem by a pupil from the group, whose experience of otherness was captured in a way that resonated with me deeply, followed by some of my own poetry. After this we showed the film made by Kirklees Local TV, with Omar’s commissioned music, and then Omar himself performed his music live to a beautifully receptive crowd, with his legendary hit There’s Nothing Like This closing the evening.
Additionally, Omar and I are collaborating on a further project, and I will be visiting his studio to finalise it next month.
Stretching beyond my comfort zone as a creative artist
What I’ve learnt repeatedly through my time with HuddLitFest, is how priceless it is to work with someone like Michelle Hodgson, whose insight allows her to understand a skillset I had but hadn’t stretched into yet. My initial emails sharing any concerns have always been met with a certainty from her that then echo in my own self-belief. A new and lasting comfort, ironically, came from stretching beyond my comfort zone. The comfort of ticking off new achievements and galvanising my trust in myself as a thinker, interviewer, speaker and more. Also, realising how the time taken to really prepare has enabled trust in me from the contributors and school I worked with, so that they were keen to work with me again.
Each event has felt like a reunion, with other artists like Amanda Huxtable and Desiree Reynolds, who I respect and enjoy, gravitating to the events as contributors and audience members. As a festival, the HuddLitFest schedule maps the Spring season, with its nectar drawing us in like literary butterflies.
I don’t think there has been any other organisation that has so generously invested in me, in a way that manifested such concrete and rich experiences for me as a poet and writer. So I look forward to HuddLitFest25 – and all the other years to come.
Chérie Battiste