The Medway Poets
group of humans
The Medway Poets were founded in Medway, Kent, in 1979. They were an English punk based poetry performance group and later formed the core of the first Stuckists Art Group. The members were Miriam Carney, Billy Childish, Robert Earl, Bill Lewis, Sexton Ming, Charles Thomson and Alan Denman. Others associated with the group include Philip Absolon, Sanchia Lewis and Tracey Emin. Most members also practised 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 Rob Earl from 1975 on the bank of the River Medway in Maidstone, Kent, in the Lamb Inn, later called Drake's Crab and Oyster House, at 9 Fair Meadow. These led on to readings promoted by a Medway College lecturer, Alan Denman, in the York Tavern & Railway Inn in Chatham, which brought The Medway Poets together, inspired by a fusion of the then-new Punk subculture and a historical reference to Berlin cabaret. Lewis named the group.
Alan Denman was a founding 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).
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This entry incorporates text from “The Medway Poets” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.