The Medway Poets
Encyclopedia
Medway
Medway is a conurbation and unitary authority in South East England. The Unitary Authority was formed in 1998 when the City of Rochester-upon-Medway amalgamated with Gillingham Borough Council and part of Kent County Council to form Medway Council, a unitary authority independent of Kent County...
, North Kent in 1979. They were an English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
punk
Punk ideology
Punk ideologies are a group of varied social and political beliefs associated with the punk subculture. In its original incarnation, the punk subculture was primarily concerned with concepts such as rebellion, anti-authoritarianism, individualism, free thought and discontent...
based poetry performance group and later formed the core of the first Stuckists
Stuckism
Stuckism is an international art movement founded in 1999 by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson to promote figurative painting in opposition to conceptual art...
Art Group. The members were Miriam Carney, Billy Childish
Billy Childish
Billy Childish is an English artist, painter, author, poet, photographer, film maker, singer and guitarist...
, Rob Earl, Bill Lewis
Bill Lewis
William "Bill" Lewis is an English artist, story-teller, poet and mythographer. He was a founder-member of The Medway Poets and of the Stuckists art group.-Early life:...
, Sexton Ming
Sexton Ming
Sexton Ming is a British artist, poet and musician who was a founding member of The Medway Poets and the Stuckists art group .-Life and career:...
and Charles Thomson
Charles Thomson (artist)
Charles Thomson is an English artist, painter, poet and photographer. In the early 1980s he was a member of The Medway Poets. In 1999 he named and co-founded the Stuckists art movement with Billy Childish. He has curated Stuckist shows, organised demonstrations against the Turner Prize, run an art...
(and briefly initially Alan Denman). Others associated with the group include Philip Absolon
Philip Absolon
Philip Absolon is a British artist and a founder member of the Stuckists art group, exhibiting in the group shows, including The Stuckists Punk Victorian at the Walker Art Gallery in 2004, and taking part in Stuckist demonstrations against the Turner Prize...
, Sanchia Lewis and Tracey Emin
Tracey Emin
Tracey Karima Emin RA is a British artist of English and Turkish Cypriot origin. She is part of the group known as Britartists or YBAs ....
. Most members also practiced other art forms including music and painting.
History
The origin of The Medway Poets was a series of readings called "Outcrowd" staged by (Bill) Lewis and Earl from 1975 on the bank of the River MedwayRiver Medway
The River Medway, which is almost entirely in Kent, England, flows for from just inside the West Sussex border to the point where it enters the Thames Estuary....
in Maidstone
Maidstone
Maidstone is the county town of Kent, England, south-east of London. The River Medway runs through the centre of the town linking Maidstone to Rochester and the Thames Estuary. Historically, the river was a source and route for much of the town's trade. Maidstone was the centre of the agricultural...
, Kent
Kent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...
in the Lamb Pub, later called Drake's Crab and Oyster House. These led on to readings promoted by a Medway College
Kent Institute of Art & Design
The Kent Institute of Art & Design was an art school based across three campuses in the county of Kent, in the United Kingdom. It was formed by the amalgamation of three independent colleges: Canterbury College of Art, Maidstone College of Art and Rochester College of Art...
tutor, Alan Denman, in the York Pub in Chatham
Chatham, Medway
Chatham is one of the Medway towns located within the Medway unitary authority, in North Kent, in South East England.Although the dockyard has long been closed and is now being redeveloped into a business and residential community as well as a museum featuring the famous submarine, HMS Ocelot,...
, which brought The Medway Poets together, inspired by a fusion of the then-new punk movement and a historical reference to Berlin cabaret. Lewis named the group.
Alan Denman was briefly a member, but the group stabilised to
Miriam Carney, Billy Childish
Billy Childish
Billy Childish is an English artist, painter, author, poet, photographer, film maker, singer and guitarist...
, Rob Earl, Bill Lewis
Bill Lewis
William "Bill" Lewis is an English artist, story-teller, poet and mythographer. He was a founder-member of The Medway Poets and of the Stuckists art group.-Early life:...
, Sexton Ming
Sexton Ming
Sexton Ming is a British artist, poet and musician who was a founding member of The Medway Poets and the Stuckists art group .-Life and career:...
and Charles Thomson
Charles Thomson (artist)
Charles Thomson is an English artist, painter, poet and photographer. In the early 1980s he was a member of The Medway Poets. In 1999 he named and co-founded the Stuckists art movement with Billy Childish. He has curated Stuckist shows, organised demonstrations against the Turner Prize, run an art...
. Others who read with the group included Philip Absolon
Philip Absolon
Philip Absolon is a British artist and a founder member of the Stuckists art group, exhibiting in the group shows, including The Stuckists Punk Victorian at the Walker Art Gallery in 2004, and taking part in Stuckist demonstrations against the Turner Prize...
and Sanchia Lewis (no relation to Bill Lewis).
The Medway Poets' appearances included pubs and colleges, sometimes with punk groups, as well as the Kent Literature Festival and the 1981 international Cambridge Poetry Festival
Cambridge Poetry Festival
The Cambridge Poetry Festival was an international biennale for poetry held in Cambridge, England, between 1975–1985. The festival was founded in an attempt to combine as many aspects as possible of this form of art...
. There were, however, personality clashes within The Medway Poets, particularly between Childish and Thomson, who said, "There was friction between us, especially when he started heckling my poetry reading and I threatened to ban him from a forthcoming TV documentary." However, a TV South documentary on the group in 1982 brought them to a wider regional audience.
According to Billy Childish:
- Me & Charles were at war from 1979 until 1999. He even threatened having bouncers on the doors of Medway Poet’s readings to keep me out. There were two camps in the Medway Poets from day one - me & Sexton versus everyone else. Bill came down on our side in the end. Rob Earl would have been with me & Sexton, but he wasn’t on the scene so much.
Thomson has also said this period was "an incredibly pressured and creative time and established the basis on which we are still working." He described the performances:
Thomson was "a very amusing poet, who avoided 'rant' and 'rap', conveying skip-along, punked up rhyming couplets – a Sir John Betjeman
John Betjeman
Sir John Betjeman, CBE was an English poet, writer and broadcaster who described himself in Who's Who as a "poet and hack".He was a founding member of the Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture...
on speed – hilariously accompanied by props, sounds, music."
Tracey Emin
Tracey Karima Emin RA is a British artist of English and Turkish Cypriot origin. She is part of the group known as Britartists or YBAs ....
and Vic Templar. There was virtually no group activity during the early 1990s. In 1998, Lewis, Childish and Thomson discussed by phone a possible Medway Poets anthology. On January 28, 1999 Thomson suggested to Childish that they relaunch the group with an art agenda as the Stuckists, a name which Thomson had derived from a Childish poem, which quoted Emin's insult that Childish was "Stuck! Stuck! Stuck!" for his pursuit of painting, as well as his style of music and poetry. Bill and Sanchia Lewis (no relation), Ming and Absolon were also founder members.
The original group name still appeared occasionally, and in 2000, it was advertised on Ming's website that "Sexton and 3 other Medway Poets will be reading at the next Stuckism Show" on 20 May at the Metropole Arts Centre in Folkestone, Kent.
Publications
The members of The Medway Poets published their work and that of others prolifically with imprints such as Victoria Press, Phyroid Press, Lazerwolf, Hangman and Cheapo. The early publications of the group were mostly xeroxed and stapled publications, and are now sought after. The Power House And Other Plays by Sexton Ming (The Phyroid Press, Chatham, 1980) is now selling for £50 as "First Edition. Very scarce and early piece from one of the founding members ... A near fine in stapled wrappers."Tracey Emin
Tracey EminTracey Emin
Tracey Karima Emin RA is a British artist of English and Turkish Cypriot origin. She is part of the group known as Britartists or YBAs ....
was a local art student and became associated with the group through her then-boyfriend, Childish. In 1995 in an interview in the Minky Manky show catalogue by Carl Freedman
Carl Freedman
Carl Freedman is the founder of Carl Freedman Gallery . He previously worked as a writer and a curator, initially with Damien Hirst, to help pioneer the Young British Artists phenomenon.-Life and work:...
, when asked, "Which person do you think has had the greatest influence on your life?" She replied, "Uhmm... It's not a person really. It was more a time, going to Maidstone College of Art, hanging around with Billy Childish, living by the River Medway."
She took part in some of the later poetry performances. On one such occasion at the Gravesend Adult Education Centre (Victoria Centre) she walked onto the stage in a mac. After a period of indecision, she removed it to reveal a pink basque and stockings, and read out poems by Childish, who in the meantime had fled from the room.
Her first book of writing was "'edited' into reasonable shape" by (Bill) Lewis, printed by Thomson and published by Childish as Six Turkish Tales (Hangman 1987).
Anthologies
- 1980: The Medway Poets (Cheapo Publications)
- 1980s: Fracture Clinic (Bill Lewis)
Imprints
This list is incomplete- Cheapo Press
- Phyroid Press
- Lazerwolf
- Hangman
- Victoria Press