Berengrave, and more

Our second arts edition features work by six unique Medway creatives

Welcome to our latest Saturday creative edition. These will be coming to you on some Saturdays in a manner that, alongside our Sunday interviews, is something akin to a broadsheet’s cultural magazine or a Medway ‘New Yorker’. These editions will feature a mixture of art, music, photography, poetry, short films, and stories from Medway creatives, demonstrating the breadth of talent in our towns.

This edition features the photo and poetry series ‘Berengrave’ by Robin Halls and Maria C McCarthy, music from Brigadier Ambrose with ‘The Battle of Ordnance Street’, comic strip script ‘Bleeding Heart Boy’ by Steven Keevil, ‘Dragon’s Teeth’ art by David Frankum and the short story ‘Wasn’t what it was made out to be…’ by Andrew McAlindon.

These editions are under our Medwayish banner. If you are a Medway creative and you would be interested in submitting work to a future edition, please email medwayish@gmail.com.

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First up is a photography and poetry project published in the ‘Berengrave' zine - an analogue publication. Berengrave Nature Reserve is in lower Rainham and these images were taken in February 2021 when it had suffered from widespread flooding.

Berengrave

by Robin Halls and Maria C McCarthy

Noticeboard

Noticeboard

There is nothing going on,
though ghosts of sticky marks
edge a landscape of things past.

Rust, spores and lichen
speckle a frame of flaking green;
mottles of brown and cream
suggest an abstract scene.

The trail of a creature maps
a journey south to north.
Or is it a path,
a route through the trees,
the woodland floor and canopy?

A papyrus chronicle of droughts
and drownings, it captures
a tented city of paper leaves
resting on blades of new growth,
triple-trunked sentinels rising and diving,
twisted root fingers extending
and wrapping, and reaching
to grasp with feathery tendrils.

Reflections

Reflections

Venture into the upside-down:
which is the reflection,
which is the tree?

Ice Arrow

Ice Arrow

The perfect weapon
dissolves without detection.

Like the Snow Queen’s splinter
that freezes a child’s heart,
it thaws with the spring.

Photography by Robin Halls and poetry by Maria C. McCarthy, the author of two poetry collections. She is a contributing editor (with SM Jenkin) of Inspired by Six Women Who Shook the World.

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Brigadier Ambrose are featured in Do It Yourself: a History of Music in Medway. After releasing a series of digital-only singles, the band released their debut and only album to date, Fuzzo, in early 2010 through their own Brigadier Records.

The Battle of Ordnance Street

by Brigadier Ambrose

Brigadier Ambrose are an alternative pop band from Chatham, England.

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Do It Yourself: A History of Music in Medway, by Stephen H Morris, is the definitive and indispensable guide to Medway music. Mixing oral history with profiles of the best singles, EPs and albums to come out of the Medway Towns since the mid-1970s, Morris tells the story of how performers such as Billy Childish, The Dentists and Lupen Crook have produced music whose influence extends far beyond the reach of five small towns in the north of Kent.

Do It Yourself: A History of Music in Medway is published by Medway publishers Cultured Llama is available from our Medwayish store.

Do It Yourself: A History of Music in Medway by Stephen Morris. Available from our Medwayish store.

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