The Medway Poets - History

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 Medway in Maidstone, Kent, in the Lamb Pub, later called Drake's Crab and Oyster House. These led on to readings promoted by a Medway College tutor, Alan Denman, in the York Pub in Chatham, which brought The Medway Poets together, inspired by a fusion of the then-new punk movement and a historical reference to Berlin cabaret.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, Rob Earl, Bill Lewis, Sexton Ming and Charles Thomson. Others who read with the group included Philip Absolon 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. 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 on speed – hilariously accompanied by props, sounds, music."

After the TV South programme, reunions were increasingly intermittent. An LP The Medway Poets was released on Hangman Records in 1988 with guest readers including Tracey Emin 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.