Interview with Chrissy Derbyshire, author of "Mysteries"

 

C: I had already written many short stories and poems, without any clear idea of how I was going to use them. Then one day in 2007, at the Mercian Gathering camp, I happened to meet Kevan Manwaring, who was performing there as Tallyessin the Bard. I told him a little about my own writing, and he told me that he ran a small publishing company, Awen Publications, and suggested I sent him some of my work. Some of the pieces I sent him went on to become part of ‘Mysteries’.

 

 

C: I chose the title ‘Mysteries’ because its meaning (rather appropriately) is ambiguous. It could refer to an unexplained or inexplicable event or phenomenon. It could refer to a mysterious story. Or it could refer to a religious rite that changes whoever undergoes it, or to knowledge that is divinely inspired. All of these meanings are touched on in one way or another in the book.

 

 

C: If I wanted to be poetic (but still truthful) about it, I’d say that ‘Mysteries’ is about awe and wonder. In more prosaic terms, it’s broadly about weird things happening to ordinary people.

 

 

C: Ashling in ‘The Mysteries’ and Ana in ‘Bridey’ contain elements of myself as I once was or as I am now. Although she isn’t really a character as such, I suppose the narrator in ‘The Tidal Wave’ is the closest. But none of my stories are really autobiographical.

 

 

C: Real life, dreams, myths and legends and anything I happened to have read or seen influenced ‘Mysteries’. I am very impressionable when it comes to influences, and I tend to let them take me as they will. Sometimes when I come back to what I’ve written after a little time it seems unoriginal or sub-par. But sometimes the influence is right, and it’s worth it for those magic moments.

 

 

C: I don’t really think in terms of ‘Pagan’ and ‘non-Pagan’. ‘Paganism’ is just a term that goes some way to naming the way I live my everyday life. Only the references to different deities are strictly ‘Pagan’, and I’d hope that even those are dealt with in such a way that non-Pagans would not feel alienated.

 

 

C: Most of the poems relate to personal experience. ‘The Embrace of Nephthys’, for instance, is about standing on the seashore at night, when the sea, sky and shore are all so dark they are indistinguishable. ‘The Tidal Wave’ is the only story that relates to a real-life experience, though parts of my experience have found their way into other stories. The Forest Park in ‘Bridey’ is basically Cefn Onn Park, which is situated near to my home.

 

 

C: It may sound affected, but when I’m asked this question I always feel like I’m being asked to choose among my children! All the pieces in ‘Mysteries’ mean a lot to me. The poems are particularly personal, especially ‘Harp’, ‘The Embrace of Nephthys’ and ‘Healing’. I have a soft spot for ‘The Tidal Wave’ and ‘Siren’, and the title story, which is the oldest piece in the collection. I would find it hard to choose one overall favourite.

 

 

C: Brighid is most definitely the patroness of ‘Mysteries’. I think I can speak for most writers when I say that, like it or not, we are often an unbalanced lot. Not mentally or emotionally unbalanced (or, indeed, physically unbalanced and falling over) but far more weighted towards the dreamlike and the aesthetic than towards the practical. I was drawn to Brighid because, as well as being a goddess of poetry, she is a very complete and rounded deity. She can wail, keen with emotion, yet she can also be practical. She can be strong. She excels in everything she does, and she can dip our feet in a deep well or keep them firmly on the ground. She enabled me both to write and to do something with my writing, and for that I am deeply grateful.

 

 

C: Methinks the interviewer wants me to mention Baron Samedi!

 

 

C: Well he and some other lwa turn up in ‘Healing’, and he also has a poem entirely to himself, ‘My Grave’. ‘Cut Me Down’ features John Barleycorn and ‘The Embrace of Nephthys’ is so called because Nephthys ruled boundaries and seashores among other things. Persephone features very strongly in ‘The Mysteries’, and is also mentioned in ‘Perfect Balance’. There are also brief mentions of Hades and Hecate. But the actual name-dropping moments are not the whole extent to which the gods feature in ‘Mysteries’. I think the fact that it was written by a Pagan should imply that the world of ‘Mysteries’ is one in which the gods are ever-present. I sincerely hope that this sense of the closeness of divinity is evident to the reader.

 

 

C: I consider myself lucky that my first experience of group work as a Pagan was with a particularly eclectic group. It brought home to me the fact that one doesn’t need to be just one thing, or to appreciate just one facet of spirituality. This has become an important part of my spiritual identity. CUPS will always have a special place in my heart. I think I’ll always be a CUPS member, deep down.

 

 

C: I had recently, along with my family, become very disillusioned by the evangelical church in which I was brought up. I knew I couldn’t just stop being a spiritual person – I just didn’t have it in me to be an atheist – but I didn’t know where to turn. I had come to dislike the elitist, dogmatic element of evangelical Christianity, the shunning of anything deemed by the pastor to be ungodly, and the lack of any strong female role models. I believed in faeries. I believed in magic. I believed that a good god would never judge mankind for not believing in him. In fact, I had quite a strong sense of what I did and didn’t believe, and when I took my first book on Paganism (Wicca, in fact) out of the library, it seemed to put a name to everything I was inside. I was also charmed by the rich imagery and mythology surrounding Paganism. These are the things that attracted me in the first place, and Paganism is now so much a part of my life that I couldn’t stop being interested in it. It would be like losing interest in the world.

 

 

C: Working with Kevan has been an absolute pleasure. He is not only a good publisher and a virtuoso bard, but also a dear friend. There’s no one else I’d rather share a horn of mead and a packet of fig rolls with!

 

C: I have a few things on the go at the moment, most notably a (possible) novel. For now I’ll say only that it will be based on various sea stories (mainly because I don’t know much more about it myself). I plan to write whenever and wherever and however I possibly can. And I plan (all being well) to get very good at it too.