[[File:MedwayPoets.jpg|thumb|right|Sexton Ming, Tracey Emin, Charles Thomson, Billy Childish and musician Russell Wilkinson
at the Rochester Adult Education Centre 11 December 1987 to record the Medway Poets LP]]
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Inn in Chatham, which brought The Medway Poets together, inspired by a fusion of the then-new Punk subculture and a historical reference to Berlin cabaret.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).
The Medway Poets' appearances included pubs like The Three Daws at 6 Town Pier in Gravesend 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 Television South (TVS) 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: