Poet Town is a new anthology of poems, all with a connection to Hastings (and thereabouts). Jane Midwinter grew up in the area. She is a a former education professional turned menopause advocate and Hastings-based poet. She is also the Creative Lead for The Stables Theatre’s Scene & Heard Festival which was led by women this year and celebrates women’s stories through arts and community events in Hastings. Here she talks about Poet Town, poetry and all things Hastings.
www.maxinesilver.co.uk
Scattered Pins
I was delighted when Scattered Pins was accepted. It isn’t autobiographical, but it is personal in feeling. Inspired by someone close who went through a painful time, it explores betrayal — the way a single confession can pollute everything that came before. I was searching for a metaphor and found it in the sea: looking out from Bexhill/Hastings at the busy, beautiful but sometimes polluted English Channel, with tankers clouding the horizon. That dark slick of truth felt right for the poem’s emotional weather.
www.maxinesilver.co.uk
Twelve Hundred Postcards
I’d never read my poems in public before. Tim Barlow (a well-known Hastings poetry figure) runs the monthly “A Load of Poets” open mic at Twelve Hundred Postcards on Queens Road. I went… and then I went again. It was liberating. Tim creates a warm, inclusive room where new and seasoned voices share space — and now, when I sit there listening, I sometimes think, “We’re making history.”
Fairlight & the Firehills
Fairlight and the Country Park were home from when I was 14. It’s an evocative place for me: teenage rebellions on the cliffs; parties on the beach; flying kites; (quietly) scattering my father’s ashes; walking the dog; that long sky that rolls to the sea. On a clear night you could see Dungeness, sometimes the lights of France; on the clearest days, even the coastline of Boulogne with the naked eye. The hills pour down into Hastings Old Town and the fishing beach; everything is connected by paths, memories and weather.
Hastings — love, grit and layers
Hastings is Marmite: love it or don’t but if you know it, really know it, it holds you. I moved from London at 14 (reluctantly), then fell hard for the place and its people. I went to school in Rye; worked Saturday jobs (the Golden Egg, Superdrug); waited tables in a seafront restaurant where the food came with operatic arias and met my husband at Courtney’s disco. I learned to draw at the Brassey Institute (now Hastings Library); I still buy fish in the Old Town, among the black net huts. There’s theatre (The Stables), street performance, Jack in the Green, beer and music festivals, and a constant thrum of art, poetry, food, and comedy. Rough around the edges, yes; but creative to its bones.
Old Town, funiculars, and the trail to St Leonards
I often stick to the Old Town and St Leonards — the funicular railways, the castle, pubs like the First In Last Out, vintage shops (I still miss Magpie in George Street) and the ever-changing restaurants on King’s Road. It’s an onion of a town: you peel it back, layer by layer, sometimes with tears in your eyes, until you find the sweet heart of it.
Places that keep calling
My most connected, creative spot is the path from Warren Road to the Firehills — the big sky, the sea to the left, Hastings to the right, memories underfoot. As teenagers we walked those cliffs at night, heels over our shoulders, learning the constellations, hauling our cold bones home (Henry Normal has the perfect phrase for it). It is, quite simply, home.
The words of others
Several poems in particular stand out in Poet Town. From the modern poets, Henry Normal’s Winchelsea Beach in Winter resonates deeply, especially its line “the sky is so wide it tints and tilts the sea, the clouds and even the sand,” which perfectly captures a coastline walked countless times, from Fairlight to Pett Level and on to Camber Sands. Among the classics, Bessie Rayner Parkes’ Hastings in April is especially moving, not least because I can picture the High Street where Parkes once walked and wrote, and feel the continuity across generations. And finally, Edward Lear’s whimsical The Owl and the Pussycat remains a lifelong favourite—a nonsense love story that I recited to my children, and a reminder that, “all love stories are full of nonsense.”
What’s next?
Poet Town is published on 10 September and launched on 18 September at the Observer Building (as part of Hastings Book Festival) which currently has a pop-up roof bar. There’ll be readings, books for sale (paperback, hardback, and a deluxe photo edition), and a run of events across libraries and bookshops. More ideas are bubbling — including children’s Poet Town plans — and the poets are talking to each other, collaborating, and keeping momentum. It doesn’t feel static; it feels like the beginning of something.
Why it matters (to me)
Poetry — like Hastings — is woven through my life. I’ve recently stepped back from a long career in education (teacher, headteacher) and now have time for more Hastings and more poetry. I meet with a group of poets every fortnight; and I can’t imagine life without writing or this coastline. Poet Town makes me proud: proud of Hastings, proud of the poets, and grateful to be one of many voices in a very special chorus.
If you’ve enjoyed this post, you may also like:
