CAUGHT up in the deadliest attacks in France since World War Two, Charlotte Walker reflected on living in Paris, where she had been for two years, and decided to return to the UK.

She had gone to Paris after taking voluntary redundancy from the Civil Service, but was in two minds about moving to the French capital, as her older brother was seriously ill with cancer.

After he passed away last year, and having time to reflect on living in Paris at the time of the November 2015 terrorist attacks, Charlotte returned to the UK — and has now come to the end of her time as the latest artist-in-residence at the former home of late Launceston poet, Charles Causley — an experience she said she had ‘desperately needed’.

Provided by the Causley Trust, the residencies are a three-month opportunity to stay in Cyprus Well, on the town’s Ridgegrove Hill, to allow writers and artists time to work on their own professional development.

Charlotte has previously read art history, museum studies, languages and started, but did not finish, a poetry MA. Born in Cambridge, growing up in Huddersfield, she was the youngest of four, and the passing of her big brother has inspired the collection she has been working on at Cyprus Well for the past three months.

As well as an elegy for her brother, the collection also talks of the beauty in life that she said becomes more evident when someone is told they are going to die. Her collection is a life cycle.

While in Paris she had worked as a translator, as a sommelier, and an au pair. She had been invited to the ill-fated concert at the Bataclan theatre, where gunmen carried out mass shootings and took hostages, but said she declined the invitation because of a dislike of crowds. Her friend was shot in the hip.

She said: “I basically spent three days thinking about if I want to be in Paris anymore. Whilst I admire the principles of the French Republic, I couldn’t help but picture myself back at home. Paris always was a bit of a slog, you can really see the divide between the rich and poor in a crass and vulgar way.”

Back in the UK, she worked in an office before she applied for the residency, and said she was ‘amazed’ to be given the opportunity.

A poet and an illustrator, Charlotte grew up with Causley’s work, which she learned when she was home-schooled for a period.

Her first introduction to Causley’s work was ‘I Saw a Jolly Hunter’. She described the poem as ‘very anti-hunting’, but also ‘forgiving’, adding: “His humanity came through, through all of his writing.

“You have to write with sympathy for the most cruel of characters — sympathy for the devil. He seems to be admiring of people.”

Charlotte has visited the Charles Causley’s archives at Exeter University, where she read of his younger years in the Navy.

She said: “I got a sense of him being this very young man who is really intelligent, but that generation was beset by the expectation of going to war. I wonder if he felt a need to prove himself. I think he understood something about sacrifice.”

Affected by bullying at school, Charlotte said poetry and drawing ‘were always a refuge’, for her.

As well as being able to work on a poetry collection, Charlotte has been working on a project of illustrating Causley’s ‘My Mother Saw a Dancing Bear’. This poem along with Charlotte’s artwork could be specially published next year — 2017 marking the centenary of Charles Causley’s birth.

As part of her residency she has also carried out a day’s workshop with pupils at South Petherwin School. Causley himself had been a teacher.

Charlotte said of Causley: “I don’t think he’s taught very much in schools these days and that’s a shame.

“The pupils at South Petherwin were really impressive. It’s amazing how kids that age can take on poetic form, structure, rhythm, rhyme so easily.

“[Causley] wasn’t a snob, he was writing for everyone. I think the kids really connected with that very quickly.

“As I have been living here, whenever I meet people who were his students — which seem to be numerous and of many different decades — they universally say he was a lovely man and he always had time for you.”

Although Charlotte said she is already ‘mourning the loss’ of Cyprus Well, which has been her home from September until this week, she has expressed her gratitude for the ‘pause’ this residency has given her.

The residency is part of the Causley Trust’s Spark to Flame project, and she said it has sparked something in her.

“It’s like your life is paused for this period and that’s a gift. And I suppose it’s a gift from the Trust to people who are becoming writers,” she said.

To read Charlotte’s blog posts of her time during the residency, visit http://causleytrust.org/tag/charlotte-walker/

For more information on the Spark to Flame project, visit http://causleytrust.org/the-spark-to-flame-project/