Clare Ferguson-Walker's work is charged with a kind of electric honesty. Sculpture, paintings, poems that speak from the edges mentally, about the body under pressure, the surreal places the mind goes when reality blurs. Themes such as motherhood, beauty, sadness and grief.

 

Clare's performance style is visceral and fearless. Blending humour, trauma and social critique into something unmistakably her own. In this interview we explore how she puts that energy onto the page and onto the stage, and how her work transforms lived experience into art that feels urgent, important, raw and honest.

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LP: So, Clare, how are you doing?

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CFW: Well, great after that. I just feel massively boosted. That's brilliant. I'll give myself a little round of applause. I just hope I live up to it now.

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LP: What is keeping you busy at the moment?

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CFW: Well, right now I've been really focusing on some visual artwork. So, I've got three sculptures on the go, a new painting and I'm also putting a collection of poetry together.

 

Performance hasn't necessarily taken a back seat, but it's not at the absolute forefront at the moment while I get a new collection together and some new sculptures out there.

 

LP: You're across a lot of different types of art, aren't you? So, you can't constantly be on one.

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CFW: No. Well, I've said this before, I often feel like I'm having an affair on one of them, you know, when I'm focusing on one thing and not giving something else the attention. It literally feels like I'm cheating somehow on one particular art form, but you do have to be disciplined about which thing you focus on. You just spread yourself too thin.

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LP:  Your live work is very physical. Rhythm. Breath. The emotional projection that you put into your performance poetry. We met years ago at the Queen's Hall in Narberth, didn't we? Do you remember that gig?

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CFW: I do remember that gig.

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LP: We were on the bill together. You might even have booked me. And you were doing a show that night that combined storytelling, stand-up, poetry: a bit of everything. And there were moments in that show, and I've said this to you before, when you launched yourself into a poem. And I was blown away by it, really. The physicality, the goose pimples, everything, the fire behind it. How does performing a poem shape the way you write?

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CFW: I'll definitely tend to go for a rhyming pattern, partly because I'm absolutely convinced that there's some part of our primordial brain that's kind of keyed into rhyming from a really early age. Nursery rhyming is a way that we learn language and so things tend to literally just sound more sing-songy on the ear.

 

I'll often approach things thinking about the rhythm and the rhyme, but also you're talking about physicality. If there's something there where I'm describing an action, I'll tend to do the action. There's very much a thought process of what can my body do to add to this? And I really enjoy that.

 

I think one of the main things I enjoy about poetry particularly is you're not necessarily under the tyranny of a punchline. You know, when you're on the stage performing as a stand-up comedian, you've got to get those laughs in, haven't you? And if it doesn't come, it's just that awful kind of dead zone. With poetry, you don't necessarily have to have a laugh every few minutes. Don't get me wrong, I really love making people laugh, but you can take people in different directions. You can bring in a bit of pathos. You can bring in some more emotional, thoughtful things that aren't necessarily jokes. And I love that. I love the freedom that you get with poetry.

 

I can't think of anybody else who works specifically on the stand-up circuit who just throws in the odd poem. Usually, people will work as performance poets. Actually, I can think of somebody, Rob Auton does it and he does it with aplomb. He'll bring poetry into his gigs. And I think it kind of becomes a bit genre defying because you're sort of, you've got a foot in each camp where you're working with poetry and with stand up and it's really nice. Yeah, I just prefer it loads now.

 

LP: Reading poetry and experiencing it in a performance: two very different experiences.

 

CFW: Aren't they just? In fact, somebody came up to me not that long ago at a party. It was such a funny thing for him to have come and said, but he'd heard me performing a poem called Booze, which is all, you know, it's just ridiculous and it's all about drunken nights out in Swansea and flashing my boobs at random strangers. And he wanted to come and tell me that it just wasn't as good when he read it out of the book. Thanks for that. Brilliant. Yeah. He made a point of it and obviously looked really pleased with himself.

 

LP: Generally speaking, then, what do you think performance does to a poem?

 

CFW: Brings it to life, doesn't it? Just injects it with life. It's like being Frankenstein and bringing your monster to life, literally. I can't think of anything better to say than that. When people are reading it off the page, they're reading it in their own voice. So, you've got your own monologue and your own voice that's reading it. And of course, when it's performed, it's like watching, it's the difference between watching a film and reading a film script. You're literally looking at other people putting their voice on that artwork. It's like a whole other art form really.

 

LP: When I saw you that night at the Queen's Hall, you could almost see a little shift, almost like a different persona, hit that poem. Would you say that performance brings out a different version of you?

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CFW: Definitely. I even hear my voice changing sometimes. Yes, it definitely does. There is a definite performer that comes to the forefront. And in fact, in everyday life, I can be quite shy in certain situations. People would never think that of me, if they saw me on stage, but I can be quite introverted at times. I was always shy picking the kids up from school, going to the school gate. I was never a big kind of chatty person. Yeah, I can be quite introverted, so there's definitely an extrovert that comes to the fore when I'm performing.

 

LP: Some of the things that you talk about, that you write about as well, are quite raw, very honest. Do you see a shift in the audience's perception as well then? Do they lean into it? Do you ever get resistance, or do audiences recognise themselves in some of the things that you're talking about?

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CFW: That's a really interesting question. I've often not wanted to do poems about mental illness and things like that, just because you think people have paid to come out, they really want to be entertained. I've actually started doing more poems that are much more serious and to do with mental health problems and things like that. You will always get people coming over at the end saying thank you so much for doing that, and our son's got these issues going on or our daughter.

 

People can really relate to some of the difficult themes that I have been bringing to the stage more recently. I would say people do tend to lean into it, certainly the few that come and say something to you at the end you feel that they've got something out of it. And if not, tough titties! This is art!

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LP: We talked about humour as well and bringing humour into it, and you sent me two poems. I'm just going to mention one of them for now and then we'll talk about the other one. One of them is, OMG, Have You Lost Weight? In this one, you use humour. It's wry, it's sarcastic. And in the structure of it, you use repetition and escalation to expose how society essentially reduces women to appearance.

 

CFW: Yeah, absolutely.

 

LP: Just, surface level appearance without looking under that appearance at achievement and identity and all of those things. I wanted to just ask about the role of humour in that because you're delivering social commentary possibly into spaces that would back away from it. If you were to say, I'm going to talk about social commentary, people might go, oh, really? But I'm going to actually make you laugh doing it.

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CFW: Exactly.

 

LP: It's A Trojan horse is what that is haha.

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CFW: Oh Col, Trojan horse! I love it. I love it. I think that, you know, in that sense, the humour can be a lube, you know? Trojan horse, a lubed-up Trojan horse slips in nice and easily.

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LP: That’s a very different film, isn't it?

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CFW: It's a very different interview. That's for the other magazine that you're bringing out.

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Do you know what? I actually love performing that poem. Yeah, Oh My God, Have You Lost Weight? It's like, you're looking well. Have you been ill?

 

When I perform it I don't just repeat the line, Oh my God, have you lost weight? I get more and more manic as I say it. By the end, I'm literally going, OH MY GOD! HAVE YOU LOST WEIGHT!? and it just gets ever more frantic as I get to the end. And I really make myself laugh doing it.

 

As you say, yeah, there's a sarcasm in there. It gets more and more ridiculous, doesn't it? There's all these like crazy levels of achievement going on alongside this, you know, this question, have you lost weight?

 

Society is still completely obsessed with looks. Not just for women, for guys too, I would say these days, especially with social media. Particularly social media as we know, it's just become absolutely unbelievable hasn't it, trying to look a certain way. And even after the feminist revolution, third wave feminism, all of these social movements that have tried to veer us as society away from the shallowness of what we look like, people are still obsessed.

 

LP: Absolutely.

 

CFW: Aren't they just, I mean, you can jab yourself up now to lose weight, can't you? It's still a really prevalent issue, I think, for everybody.

 

And the number of people who've talked to me since, because I have lost weight, that's the thing that's happened. I've probably lost about a three stone in the last few years. The number of people that will comment on that before even asking if you're okay. That's almost the first thing that people will say. It's like, bloody hell, you've lost weight. You think, I might be dying of cancer for all you know. There could be something really serious going on, but it's still at the forefront of people's observations.

 

So yeah, that poem was a real, just as you say, a sarcastic take on the ridiculous issue around fat. There's a brilliant book called Fat Is A Feminist Issue that I read when I was doing my English A-levels years and years ago and it's absolutely brilliant. I can well recommend it to everyone.

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LP: Talking about the second poem that you sent. Excuse me, has your mind ever broken? In that poem you move across lots of different themes. There's psychosis, there's almost a cosmic imagery in there as well, childhood, memory, humour. What draws you to writing about altered states of consciousness? What drives you to choose the themes that you've chosen in that and actually the wider work?

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CFW: Because I've experienced psychosis myself, so I'm absolutely writing from first-hand experience of having psychosis and being really poorly actually.

 

I've experienced psychosis three times in my adult life. And I think it's something, it's very trendy at the moment to talk about neurodivergence, but I think psychosis particularly, there's still a heck of a lot of stigma there when talking about people who've really had off-the-rail mental health problems.

 

It really was just about broaching that experience to just break down the stigma as much as possible and to keep talking about it and to keep talking about these things. What can happen in a psychotic state is, the barrier between your conscious and subconscious mind just collapses. There's something about a nervous breakdown where that part of your mind collapses and actually you almost become someone who's experiencing a dream state in a waking world.

 

I really wanted to try and write about that in a way that was accessible to people, where everything is becoming symbolic, where you feel like you're getting messages from, I don't know, the TV, the radio, everything becomes incredibly meaningful.

 

It's almost like interpreting a dream after you've been in that state. Your own past will come up to haunt you in many ways if you're having that kind of experience.

 

As you say, there's childhood memory involved in it and I really wanted to talk about how you can get better as well: that you don't actually have to be a written off person if you've had really serious mental health problems. The end of that poem, it almost, there's like a journey, of coming back to oneself. And that felt really important with that poem. It sort of feels like it's a journey, isn't it, that poem?

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LP: Very much.

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CFW: It really feels like you're going on a bit of an odyssey and then coming back round to yourself. I have performed that a few times and people will often come and say thank you so much for talking about these issues. It definitely touches people.

 

LP: That journey, like you say, it's about coming back to yourself and those final images are of, almost a domestic setting. The role of mother in that, and it takes all that cosmic imagery, all those dreamlike images and brings it back to you. You do that in your sculpture as well. There are mythologies and folkloric tales in there, themes of motherhood, representation of motherhood. You've just touched on where those images come from. How do you balance that with real life, that’s grounded in the here and now?

 

CFW: I hear what you're saying, that there's a fine line between symbolism that's really out there, almost like shamanic symbolism.

 

LP: How do you bring that back to a place that's more domestic, that's more recognisable?

 

CFW: I suppose I've always seen that my sculptures are like a visual poetry that certain things, positions, animals, patterns will represent a certain state of being.

 

There's almost like this narrative key where certain characters will represent certain things in the real world. It's kind of like a visual poetry. There's definitely a crossover there where imagery becomes symbolic. I guess using the human figure is a way of making things recognisable and bringing things into a realm where people can appreciate them and understand them.

 

So even if somebody looks at a sculpture and thinks, I've got no idea what that's about, they might at least be able to say, well, she's sculpted the feet very well. No idea what she was thinking when she made that, but hasn't it got nice eyes?

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LP: You mentioned earlier that you're working on creative writing, on short fiction and horror stories and things like that. If you were to look at poetry alongside that, would you say that poetry gives you access to a language that you couldn't use elsewhere? You think of narrative structure, and you think of fiction in a certain way. Does poetry give you more?

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CFW: I think there's a richness of language that's going to transpose no matter where you put it. I read a lot of poetry as well, and the use of symbolism, metaphor, that's something that can be transposed into a fictional genre as well as a poetic genre. I would say one definitely speaks to the other.

 

But I love writing horror stories. It's been a passion of mine since I was young in the 80s, collecting loads of, B-movie, VHS tapes of all of the brilliant horror that was around then. And they definitely don't make them like they used to. They were just fantastic, weren't they?

 

I've always had this fascination with horror where you can be taken to the edges of your tolerance actually. You can teeter on the absolute edges of fear and take people into that realm and bring them back again. In that sense, I think there's a journey with horror that's probably also in the poetry. I like to tell some kind of story with a beginning, middle and end, in the poetry as well as in writing horror stories.

 

I am getting a little short collection of horror stories together at the moment, which is dead exciting. I love folk horror particularly. It's so fascinating, isn't it? The idea that the land itself holds some kind of magical force that we don't quite fully understand. Yeah, folk horror is definitely my favourite of the horror genres.

 

LP: You're working in all these different artistic areas. When you think of an idea initially, how do you decide which way to go, how to represent it?

 

CFW: That's a really interesting question. Do you know that things will come through almost as a finished article?

 

Particularly with sculpture and painting I will just see something in my mind's eye rather than thinking, how can I represent hope? What can I do to represent that? It actually almost works the other way round. I will get the visual image of something pop up into my mind and then I'll create it from that and afterwards I will tend to interpret things that are in front of me in the same way that one might interpret a dream.

 

It's less of a how am I going to represent this, and more what does this represent now that I've made it.

 

So, the work speaks to me rather than the other way around sometimes. I'll just get like a title, or the first line will just kind of pop into my head. So rather than thinking, I want to write a poem about grief, it's almost there, it delivers itself, usually in the first line or a title.

 

I thought of a title the other day, it just popped into my head, which was, I Came In Like a Ping Pong Ball. Sorry, that's so left field, just occurred to me.

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LP: I can’t wait to hear that one! Do you know, when you think of an idea though, like that? Do you then start writing little notes? Do you have a notebook or do you put it in your phone or do you just go, do you know what? It's just going to stew.

 

CFW: Yeah, it's going to come out. Definitely. I just let my subconscious do the work.

 

LP: When you look back at the versions of yourself that appear in your poems, the mind, the cosmic traveller, as we said, the woman navigating the world's gaze, for example, what do you think those selves have given to you, the artist that you are?

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CFW: That's such a brilliant question. You know, how many versions of yourself do you have?

 

And I think personality can be like shark's teeth, can't it? One version of yourself falls away as another one kind of comes back and takes that place. And that all happens with experience.

 

It's almost like your personality probably sheds itself just in the same way that your skin does. And how would those past personalities think of the me now?

 

I would like to think they were proud of who I am. It’s quite challenging reading back some of your earlier work. I'm sure everybody would say this, that you cringe looking back at some of the things that you've done. But do you know what, Col, I don't tend to look back at past work and cringe. I will tend to try and focus on what I've managed to achieve in a positive way.

 

You know, I'm a mum as well and I've had kids and have managed to navigate being a creative person whilst also being a mum. That's not for wusses. You know yourself, as a parent and as a working person in the world, it's incredibly difficult.

 

And so I think past versions of me would be proud of who I am now. I hope so anyway. I hope they're not there rolling around on the floor. Put me out of my misery, past version of me.

 

I love that image though of like loads of different versions of yourself. Makes me think of lots of different masks all kind of being held up to the world. And you know, we change and we adapt as we go through the world, don't we?

 

And I think often, now particularly, the way social media functions, it's quite easy to feel left out by the world. If tech is taking people into different realms and producing work in different ways, as a performer it's quite easy to think of yourself as being obsolete. You know, what have I got to say in this world? How am I still relevant to young people? Or any person, how is what I say relevant?

 

I think you just have to believe in yourself in order to put yourself out there in any kind of authentic way. Otherwise, you're just kind of acting, you're just going through life kind of acting. And so there has to be a level of confidence going on in order to put yourself out there.

 

Humility as well, don't get me wrong, that probably sounds like, yeah, I think I'm the greatest person in the world. Everybody needs to listen to me. I don't feel like that. Obviously, I have moments of self-doubt as well. But I try, if I get really self-doubty voices that are probably harking back to versions of me when I was really little, rather than telling myself to shut up, I'll actually try and sort of comfort myself in some kind of way, you know, and make myself feel better.

 

So, I have quite a good relationship with myself and past versions of me. Yeah, that's nice. It's a great question. Love it.

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LP: We were talking earlier about some of the things that you've done, and you've done some amazing things. In all of those different areas. You've worked with people like Doctor John Cooper Clarke. You've supported him in massive venues everywhere. You've worked with people like Arthur Smith, you were talking about Henry Normal and something else that's coming up, you know, Phill Jupitus.

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CFW: Oh gosh, yeah, that's years ago working with Phill, yeah. Phill gave me my first proper break as a poet, actually.

 

I met him at the Laugharne Weekend, which is a brilliant literature-filled, comedy-filled, visual arts-filled event that happens once a year in Laugharne. I just met him there. I was there as a punter. I was with Mab Jones actually. And I met Phill there and we just hit it off straight away because he's a visual artist as well.

 

I can remember just showing off and showing him my website within probably like five minutes of meeting him. I'm an artist, don't you know? He absolutely loved it and adored it and basically invited me and Mab to come and support him in Edinburgh.

 

So, I went from like gigging at the back of Carmarthen Library to supporting Phill Jupitus at the Jam House in Edinburgh to packed out crowds, 500, 600 people every night in the blink of an eye. It happened really, really quickly. So that was a massive break. And after that had happened, I just had doors opening for me all over the place. It was amazing what that did. It was a huge career boost that opened a lot of doors for me at that time.

 

LP: What is around the corner for you?

 

CFW: Gosh, what is around the corner? Let's hope it's something positive.

 

Well, I'm putting a collection of short horror stories together at the moment, which I'm thoroughly enjoying. Giving myself the creeps at one in the morning while I'm writing them. Do you tend to write them through the night, horror stories? I think it's just more atmospheric, as simple as that, writing them in the dark.

 

A new poetry collection coming out as well. I've been really focusing on that. That's definitely taken a front seat for the time being rather than pursuing gigs.

 

Gigging is exhausting. I'm sure you know that yourself. I have got a few. I'm doing a double header soon with Johnny Fluffy Punk, a really good friend of mine. There are some gigs in the pipeline, but yeah, mostly focusing on putting a couple of new collections together of writing.

 

People can go and check out my visual work at my website, CFW Designs, and come and follow me on social media. It'd be lovely to have some new followers.