Two Girls and a Beehive

In-words’ first Zoom event took place on Tuesday, October 13 at 7.30. Rosie Jackson and Graham Burchell read from Two Girls and a Beehive, their joint collection of poems inspired by the lives and works of Stanley Spencer and his first wife, Hilda Carline. It was much more than a reading. Paintings and photographs illustrated the context of each poem, as details of the complex relationship Spencer had with both his wives (he divorced Hilda to marry Patricia Preece, but remained – or became again – very attached to, almost obsessed with Hilda) was explained. As was his much easier relationship with Cookham, where he was born and lived for most of his life.

Each poet had found, in the writing, a preference for focusing on particular aspects of Spencer’s life and a distinct style. Graham’s poems are ekphrastic, with a more obvious connection between verses and images, while Rosie’s start from the image and expand into a more emotional universe.

Here is a taste of Two Girls and a Beehive. I’m sure you will enjoy it. The title poem, with the accompanying early painting by Stanley Spencer – also the book cover – is by Graham. The other is Lady in Green by Rosie, accompanied here by the portrait Hilda painted of her rival, Patricia Preece, the woman for whom Stanley left her. The book was published in April 2020 by Two Rivers Press, after the collection won first prize at the Stanley Spencer Collection Competition in 2017. It is available to order from rosie@rosiejackson.org.uk as well as from from tworiverspress.com and Amazon. It’s a real treat.

Two Girls and a Beehive
after ‘Two Girls and a Beehive’, 1910

He has these butcher’s daughters
(both ginger-haired as honeycomb and sunset),
smelling roses, just that, as if oblivious
to the hovering of the holy ghost behind
and that box of whispering bees.

He loved them both, those Wooster girls,
dressed them in shades of privet green,
gave them an evening glow and posed them
on puddles of light; the last gold lily-pads
of the day.
    At times they would sit, Dot
and Emmie, on his garden wall, chatter
and giggle, backs against black railings,
and hedge of that same viridian hue.

Perhaps he felt himself to be
supernatural, as he watched
from the nursery window, thinking,
I can look and linger on you my two loves,
but you cannot see me.

But what of the bees, the honey-makers
in their Mill Lane hive? He paints them at rest,
contained, still as evening, a potential
for both sweetness and pain.
Just that.


Lady in Green
after Hilda Carline Spencer’s ‘Portrait of Patricia Preece’, 1933.  

She must like butter, Hilda thinks,
for her skin has that buttercup glow
as if she’s rolled all morning in a meadow
of wild flowers and is covered in pollen.

Hilda’s palette is limited,
she doesn’t like the muddy browns
of mistrust, but paints people as if light
were spread equally inside them,

as if it were possible to capture the soul
in its invisible perfection, as clear
as water, able to run into any shape.
But she knows how yellow turns to green

in the shadow and has to push away
the thought of what Patricia has
that she doesn’t – her husband’s longing,
a certain knack with necklaces and hats.

She mixes canal green for Patricia’s blouse,
starts on the string of glass beads
Stanley probably bought.
If her canvas were a mirror, she thinks,

she might catch sight of her own tall soul
standing behind her,
watching over her shoulder,
solemnly wringing its hands.


Events

TUESDAY MAY 13 at West Greenwich Library, 7.30 (doors open at 7)

‘Maggie & Maggie’. Same name, different voices: poetry from Maggie Brookes-Butt and Maggie Harris.

Maggie Brookes-Butt has been writing all her life, as a journalist, BBC TV producer, creative writing academic and Royal Literary Fund Fellow. Her books include six poetry collections as Maggie Butt and two historical novels as Maggie Brookes. As well as being a writer she is a compulsive reader, hopeful gardener, dreadful cook, besotted grandmother and a Londoner to the bone, though she loves to swim in the sea. Maggie will be reading from Wish, her newly published volume of new and selected poems (Greenwich Exchange, 2025). It gathers poems from Maggie’s six previous collections – about the strength of women, concern for our planet, and hope in the power of love – alongside bitter-sweet new poems about the joys and fears of a grandmother in this troubled, vulnerable and precious world.

Maggie Harris is twice Winner of the Guyana Prize for Literature, Regional Winner of The Commonwealth Short Story Prize and the Wales Poetry Award. She has worked as Creative Writing tutor, Reader Development Worker and International Teaching Fellow and in collaboration with artists across genres since 1990. In 2024 she was awarded an Arts Council grant towards revisiting Guyana and its rainforest. She is published in journals including Poetry Wales, Wasafiri, Magma, and The Caribbean Writer. Her poem ‘Canterbury’ is an Art installation in the city’s Westgate Gardens, and her poem, ‘Lit by Fire’ on the North Foreland Lighthouse, was commissioned by the BBC. She has read her work internationally and collaborations with artists in the US have put her poems to music: her poem, ‘This is Not a Gospel Song’ is on YouTube. In 2024 she was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund. Maggie will be reading from her 11th book, I Sing to the Greenhearts (SEREN, 2025), and from her memoir Kiskadee Girl.

FREE event, all welcome. Refreshments available and books on sale.

TUESDAY JUNE 24 at West Greenwich Library – ‘Telltale Poets: Sarah Barnsley, Robin Houghton and Peter Kenny’

TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 2 at West Greenwich Library – Jude Rosen, Derrick Porter and Jemma Borg

TUESDAY OCTOBER 7 at West Greenwich Library – Fiona Moore, Gale Burns and Lisa Kelly