Though her career touched on Broadway and Hollywood, Poynter was better known for her starring roles with stock and touring companies and as a prolific writer of mystery and romance stories.

The following year she joined the Pavilion Stock Company to play Bossy in their road production of Charles Hale Hoyt's farce comedy, A Texas Steer.

[6] In August 1905 Poynter began a tour playing the title rôle in a dramatization by Edward W. Roland and Edwin Clifford of Charlotte Mary Brame's novel, Dora Thorne.

[7] A little over a year later, beginning October 1906, Poynter embarked on a tour with Nixon and Co. performing the title rôle in Lena Rivers, a drama she had adapted from the novel by Mary J. Holmes.

In the end the court ruled that there was insufficient evidence to support the allegation that the film's producers had plagiarized Poynter's play and the case was dismissed.

[22] Poynter reprised her leading rôles in Hollywood adaptations of Lena Rivers (1914) and The Little Girl That He Forgot (1915), and appeared in four additional silent films, The Ordeal (1914), Born Again (1914), Hearts and Flowers (1914) and Heats of Men (1915).