Novelist Clare Allen on "Poppy Shakespeare,"

mental illness and creativity

The film Poppy Shakespeare, based on Clare Allen's

novel, takes us down a cinematic rabbit hole into
north London's fictional Dorothy Fish day hospital
where the clearly 'sane' Poppy, played by Naomi
Harris, has been mysteriously committed to a
compulsory day-program for the mentally ill.

In a psychiatric Catch 22, she must prove herself

insane in order to be eligible for the government
funding (‘madness money’) she needs to pay a lawyer
to prove in court that she is not insane.

Reminiscent of the Marshalsea in Dickens' Little Dorrit, where debtors are imprisoned
while their more guilty creditors walk free, the film's hospital is a satire of an
ineffectual mental health system, and a personal tribute to the patients Clare Allan
came to know.

In the following excerpts from a Mail Online interview, Clare Allan tells how she
'wrote' herself out of an asylum.

"Now she thinks she's an author!"

She broke down in her 20s and spent a decade bobbing in and out of the mental health
system, her head only just above water.

Her psychiatrists thought her writing was proof of delusional tendencies ("Now she
thinks she's an author!"), and it took the encouragement of an astute social worker to
propel her out of hospital and on to the 2007 bestseller lists with her first novel, Poppy
Shakespeare - a black comedy set in the psychiatric ward of a day hospital, which has
been likened to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Questioning 'mental illness'

"What I've learnt from being in the system is that there's a seed of mental illness in
everyone," says Clare, 39..."It made me question this divide between mental health and
mental illness. Actually, I think there's just a scale and you're somewhere on it...

An elusive sense of self

"I'd never had a strong sense of self. My father died six months ago and, while sorting
through his stuff, I found a story I wrote when I was really young, about a horse which
went everywhere looking for a field to live in.

"It seemed significant because that's something I still struggle with. Even now, I kind of
feel, well, do I exist?"

Drugs and neglect

The NHS [Britain's National Health Service] offered her little hope of recovery. She is
scathing about the lack of therapy offered, and dubious about the increasing doses of
drugs she was prescribed by psychiatrists who barely knew her.

Clare herself felt written off, written out of her own narrative, perhaps, especially in light
of the professionals' scornful reaction to her writing ambitions.

"I began to see a future"

Her social worker, Bernadette, to whom she has dedicated Poppy Shakespeare, was the
only one of them to provide the encouragement that shored her up. She recognised
Clare's very real talents. "And I began to see a future," says Clare.

In 1999, buoyed by the confidence that Bernadette had instilled in her, Clare applied for
and was accepted on to an MA course in creative writing at the University of East Anglia,
a brave new world where the people she met trailed self-confidence.

"That was a shock," she adds, dryly.

Writing on the ward

There were ups and downs, none more so than when she sold Poppy Shakespeare to
Bloomsbury, though she doesn't know why good luck precipitated a major setback. "I
was in hospital for five months after that. I edited large sections of the book on the
ward."

She thinks she is "more integrated, a much more solid person" today, and her
assessment seems justified.

She has certainly taken the screening of the TV film in her stride. "I'm fascinated to see
it, but it's not my baby."

She even took a bit part as one of the doctors. "I had to wrestle Anna Maxwell Martin to
the ground. For 50 takes."

She believes the great divide lies not between sanity and insanity, but functioning and
not functioning, between those who can hack it in the modern world and those who,
temporarily or permanently, cannot.
A writers life

Living alone, she has learnt how to shepherd herself through. She takes a mood-
stabilising drug and sees her social worker regularly. She writes fiction for a maximum
of five hours a day - she also has a column in The Guardian and is finishing the first
draft of her next book.

"I'm well, but I certainly don't rule out that I might be in hospital again," she says.
"However, I think it very unlikely that my life would stop in the same way. I have an
existence now." She has a Staffordshire bull terrier puppy - a focus outside herself and a
bounding conduit to enjoying the outside world. She has reconnected with some of the
old friends from Durham who fell away when she failed to return their calls, has
maintained some from UEA and others from the wards.

She says her parents helped her practically throughout, "but I didn't involve them in an
emotionally close way. I felt I needed that separateness and independence."'

Relationships

She has never had a serious relationship.

"Open to offers!" she quips. And with similar facetiousness, she quotes Alan Bennett on
her sexual preference, "That's like asking a man dying of thirst whether he'd prefer
Badoit or Perrier."

But somehow that sounds wistful, giving the impression that her personal history might
deter potential partners.

"It's hard to know, isn't it? I haven't really given people the opportunity to decide.

"I give out very clear signals of not wanting to go there. Relationships are a problematic
area for me. I can't deny it. I've just got to learn."

She once said she wanted a child.

"Did I?" She sounds amazed.

"If I had two lives, I'd want a child in one. But I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want a child on
my own.

"A lot of the pleasure would be sharing the experience with someone else.

"So as I've got one life, I'll take whatever happens. I'd love to meet the right person, for
sure, but I'm quite happy on my own, too."

Reality and fiction

She says she doesn't want to be defined by her mental illness, and anticipates a future in
which it is no longer the prime focus of her interviews.

Her next book concerns a journalist who fabricates a story, is sacked, and then sets
about trying to prove that what he invented was true.

"You know, every book I've written (including two that are unpublished) is to do with
reality and what happens when you mess around with it.

"I think that when people lie they often reveal more than when they tell the truth.
Reality is really quite boring," Clare Allan adds with a slightly shamefaced guffaw.

~~

Related:
Nurturing mental health: writing
mental health and creative talent
J.K. Rowling on Writing and Depression

Cat Robson, Talent Development Resources' Associate Editor, is an

award winning Santa Barbara writer.

Her novel in progress is set during the Hollywood blacklist of 1948.