Two Girls and a Beehive: Poems about the art and lives of Stanley Spencer and Hilda Carline Spencer - Graham Burchell; Rosie Jackson (Paperback) 21-04-2020

Two Girls and a Beehive offers a minutely observed exploration in poetry of the life and work of Stanley Spencer and his two wives, Hilda Carline and Patricia Preece, engaging readers with the particular unease that must trouble any follower of Spencer's paintings, with their human dramas and contradictory beatitudes. 'Nothing less than a masterpiece of ekphrasis, this is a work of extraordinary unity, daring and emotional breadth... These poems reconfigure Spencer's tawny pigments, scenes of warfare and bohemian domesticity, couplings in low-ceilinged rooms, flowered prints, the strange militancy of his Christian faith and, above all, the annihilation of a woman artist on the altars of desire, betrayal and art. I was smitten from the first page to the last.' ~ ANNIE FREUD '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