Two Girls and a Beehive: Poems about the Art and Lives of Stanley Spencer and Hilda Carline Spencer

Two Rivers Press 2020
 

A collaborative collection by Rosie Jackson and Graham Burchell, these poems follow the life and explore the work of visionary artist Stanley Spencer, giving voice to his complex personal life and the relative invisibility of artist Hilda Carline, his first wife. They raise issues about art, spirituality, love, war and sexual politics, drawing on Spencer’s own writing and letters as well as his biography. Spencer’s grandson John Spencer has endorsed the project.   

‘Two Girls and a Beehive is a marvellous act of dual authorship by two poets at the top of their game. Something magical happens in these pages. Works of visual power exchange speech with poems written in response to them. Biographical poems thoroughly inhabit and re-imagine the minds of Stanley and Hilda Spencer.’
David Morley

‘Outstanding is Rosie Jackson's moving and devastating insight into a complicated marriage and the mental breakdown of Hilda, and Graham Burchell's darkly humorous poems about war and work. But their voices echo and enter dialogue with each other so that there is a seamless progression throughout the work. A brilliant concept that gives a fresh picture of the troubled lives of a celebrated artist and the women he loved.’ 
Professor Helen Taylor 

‘Two Girls and a Beehive is nothing less than a masterpiece of ekphrasis.. It offers a minutely observed exploration of the life and work of Stanley Spencer and his two wives … This is a work of extraordinary unity, daring and emotional breadth. I am smitten from the first page to the last.’ 
Annie Freud

'the most enthralling book of poetry I've read in a long time… pages and pages of lines of the type I long to read, and strive for myself, but never quite achieve… poems of raw honesty, undiluted, introspective but unashamed, clear-eyed, staring down the reader and daring them not to look away.'
Ian Royce Chamberlain