Two Girls and a Beehive

October 14, 2020

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 October 8th: ‘Loving Nature in Troubled Times’
7pm at West Greenwich Library

As close as we could to National Poetry day, the launch of Derrick Porter’s and Jude Rosen’s new poetry collections (The Art of Timing and Reclamations from London’s Edgelands respectively, both with Paekakariki Press), who will be joined by Alex Josephy and Jane McLaughlin.

A free event. Books and pamphlets will be available to buy. Plenty of refreshments (donations welcome). Door will open at 6.45 for a 7pm start.

Here’s some information about the poets:

Before moving to Rye, Alex Josephy lived in London and sometimes in Italy. Now her imagination and her poems live in three different worlds; she feels lucky to be discovering a new one among the East Sussex marshlands. Alex has worked as a teacher and university lecturer and as an NHS education adviser. Her most recent collection is Again Behold the Stars, a Cinnamon Press pamphlet award winner, 2023. Other work includes Naked Since Faversham (Pindrop Press, 2020) and White Roads (Paekakariki Press, 2018). Her poems have won the McLellan and Battered Moons prizes, and have appeared in magazines and anthologies in the UK, Italy and India. You can find out more on her website: www.alexjosephy.net

Jane McLaughlin writes and publishes poetry and short stories. Her publications with Cinnamon Press include Quintet (poetry with four other poets); Quartet (short stories with three other authors) and Lockdown (prizewinning full poetry collection). Her short stories have been widely published by Arachne Press, The Frogmore Papers, Under the Radar and elsewhere. Her short story ‘Trio for Four Voices’ was included in Best British Short Stories 2018 (Salt). She has been longlisted in the National Poetry Competition and has been placed and listed in many other competitions. Ephemeral, her collection of thirty poems on the themes of climate emergency and the natural world was one of the winners of the Dreich Classic Chapbook competition in 2023. Phil Barnett writes of Ephemeral: These fine poems are like breaths on a window pane. Her words condense the ineffable…into something we can see, read, feel.

Derrick Porter grew up in Hoxton and why he began to write poetry from the age of thirteen remains one of life’s unsolved mysteries. From the time he first began to write, to well into his thirties, he wrote in ignorance of there being a poetry scene. In his early forties he joined a ‘Writing for Pleasure’ group tutored by the poet Ted Walter – the first poet he ever met. Ted suggested he send his poems to Envoi, and from then on Derrick’s poems began to appear alongside mainstream poets. In 2002 he joined the Poetry School where – under the guidance of Mimi Khalvati – he became part of the wider poetry scene. His poems have appeared in magazines such as Magma, Acumen, Interpreter House, The New Writer, Brittle Star, Poetry Review, The Long Poem Magazine, and in two anthologies: I Am Twenty People, and This Little Stretch of Life. He has also enjoyed success in a number of poetry competitions. His second collection, The Art of Timing, is coming out in September for Paekakariki Press.

Jude Rosen is a former historian, urban researcher and translator and as a poet currently runs workshops for refugees. Her pamphlet, A Small Gateway, (Hearing Eye, 2009) explored East End Jewish life and intercultural exchange with Berlin, Sarajevo, Palestine. At the moment she is writing a long sequence on Gaza. Reclamations from London’s Edgelands,  which emerged from artistic resistance to the Olympic redevelopment, has recently been published by Paekakariki Press (May 2024). Poems from it appeared in The Art of Dissent: Adventures in London’s Olympic State, (Marshgate Press, 2012); Long Poem Magazine, South Bank Poetry London Poems Anthology and Envoi and were performed on poem and living history walks of the marshes, 2015-19 (poemswalks.wordpress.com). A video “Desire Paths – a film haibun” of a walk on Leyton Marsh was produced by Fawzia Kane in 2016 (https://vimeo.com/197324168).

NOVEMBER 26th – an evening with poets who write in English while English is not their native language – with Natan Barreto, Isabel Bermudez and Kostya Tsolakis (and more).

FEBRUARY 4 – readings by Jacqueline Saphra and Sue Rose