Performance poet Estelle Phillips tells how she wrote the trauma of a car crash out of her head for an uplifting theatre show.

I’m a single Mum to four children. When my children were aged between five and ten, I went out with my boyfriend in his new sports car. I can’t remember what colour it was but I do remember we crashed head on. My boyfriend could walk and talk, and called the ambulance but I was in the passenger seat and sustained multiple fractures in my back and neck including a hangman's fracture, which is pretty freaky. I also broke my left hand, right ankle, ribs, damaged my internal organs, had a collapsed lung and flesh wounds, smashed teeth, lost the balance in my left ear and sustained a traumatic brain injury. The children were brought into intensive care to say good-bye to me. I remember that as if it were yesterday because I wanted to stay with them. That want kept me alive.

The children and I were traumatised and the years of recovery were black. The family is scarred by the experience although I’m exceptionally lucky because my bones healed and I lead what looks like a normal life.

For many years after, I could not speak of the accident, which towered over our life, and I was careful not to catch its eye in case it squashed me. I do not subscribe to the adage that what doesn’t break you makes you stronger but I learnt three things; love matters, life is beautiful, and things aren’t scary unless they kill you.

After the accident, I couldn’t do the things I used to be able to do, and lost myself. I had to find a new way of being. Poetry is my default and after a decade or so, I found a writing routine, wrote a rubbish book, the odd short story, and some not horrendous poetry. Then things stalled and I realized the accident had become what I call a “blocker” – something at the front of my head that words had to squeeze around in order to get out. I knew the time was coming for me write the accident out of my mind but thought I would unravel in the process. I put it off, fiddled about, and wrote anodyne trash. The blocker settled in for the long haul, I wrote more drivel and became bored and frustrated. The blocker and I were at an impasse, and this lasted months.

One morning, I sensed an inner shift - my subconscious was limbering up to face the accident. I made porridge, went into the sitting room, sat in my nightie in a new place and wrote. Words streamed out. I started at the fraction of the second before the impact and carried on, not to write well, but to unblock my head. The memories came out as a poem, I think because of the weight of the unsaid in poetry. My shame was the hardest part to write: the risk of paralysis remained after my initial treatment and at the time I did not want to live like that. Months after I was discharged from hospital, I slept with a man to option my death - he promised to smother me with a pillow if I became paralyzed. I paused over this truth, not wanting people to know, but truth is absolute and I put it on paper.

The first draft was completed in a number of days. The piece was titled “110 m.p.h.” because this was the estimated impact speed I saw in a report. Afterwards I was wrung out but the blocker had gone.

My habit is to write creatively first thing when my brain is less tired and edit in the afternoons. “110 m.p.h.” was relegated to the edit slot and I started a short story in the mornings. The final stage of editing was leaving the paper manuscript of “110 m.p.h.” lying around the house for me to pick up and tweak randomly.

After “110 m.p.h.” was finished, I didn’t know what to do with it because it was long and I had reservations about its explicit content, although it has a happy ending and the message, “never give up.”

The Nuffield Theatre (now MAST) in Southampton held an open call, and I submitted “110 m.p.h.” not thinking for a moment it would be accepted. My memories of the crash are visual so I designed a film montage backdrop to add depth to the performance, knowing it would be tricky to perform the poem coordinated with a film, but confident that the work wouldn’t be selected and I wouldn’t have to. I invited the theatre to edit the work because I was worried about the content. Not only was the piece selected, but also the theatre did not want to change a word.

I set about filming the montage and collaborated with Paul Bevan who is an excellent photographer; Paul’s superb drone footage was included in the montage, and Louise Jones and I worked together on some stills.

It was a challenge to get the film timings right for the fluidity of live performance and I rehearsed like mad. Performing “110 m.p.h.” is weird. I have to remove myself from it, otherwise the shame and fear would fell me, but at the same time I have to be present in the piece and invest it with love, because at the end of the day, “110 m.p.h.” is a story of love overcoming catastrophe. I’m always knackered afterwards.

Before “110 m.p.h.” opened, I needed to confess the content to my children. It was awful but they said people do anything to survive and I shouldn’t be ashamed. Their generosity overwhelms me.

The litmus test was the audience – how would they feel hearing how low you can go? To my delight, the audience feedback was fantastic and the piece got great reviews; a universal theme was that “110 m.p.h.” is uplifting!

An extract of “110 m.p.h.” is included in Estelle’s debut chapbook, Motherhoodlum (Jawbone Collective) described as “beautifully brutal” by The Hansard Gallery and available here: Motherhoodlum | Estelle Phillips (bigcartel.com)

Estelle Phillips’s publications include the poetry chapbook Motherhoodlum (Jawbone Collective) the BBC (“Reaper”, “The Trapped Doe”, “Dragon Child” and “The Hand of Hazard”), Mslexia, A Rock And A Hard Place, Anti-Heroin Chic, The International Times, and Cult of Clio as well as The Financial Times, TLS, The Independent, 7 Days and Verge. Estelle was shortlisted for the Jerry Jazz Musician Short Story Prize and the Ukraine Institute’s Writers Lab, and long listed for the Yeovil Fiction Prize (novel), and the Fish and Strands flash fiction prizes. She is a slam winner and she has performed at the Royal Albert Hall (Hammer & Tongue national finalist ’21), the Nuffield Theatre where her autobiographical poem and multi media work, “110 m.p.h.” won competitive selection and ran in February 2020, the John Hansard Gallery, Russell Cotes Museum, Anthroplay Theatre, Bardfest (opening) and at Salisbury Fringe.

Find Estelle on Instagram at: @estelle_writer4

‘110 m.p.h.’ - Ten years in waiting

Searching Through the Long Grass

Eco Writing - what comes first, ecology or story?