Here Come The Fleece Geese

The Medway Poets

Main article: The Medway Poets

In 1979, Childish was a founder member of The Medway Poets, a punk performance group, who read in pubs, as well as the Kent Literature Festival and the 1981 Cambridge International Poetry Festival. There were, however, personality clashes in the group, particularly between Childish and Charles 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." [1]However, a TV South documentary on the group in 1982 brought them to a wider regional audience. According to Childish: "Me & Charles were at war from 1979 until 1999. He even threatened having bouncers on the doors of Medway Poets' readings to keep me out."² Thomson has said this period was "an incredibly pressured and creative time and established the basis on which we are still working."³ Other members included Bill Lewis and Sexton Ming with whom Childish has continued to collaborate: they have brought out several spoken word and music albums.