Information AboutBill Lewis |
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| lewis, bill | |
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Bill Lewis (born August 1 , 1953 ) is an artist, poet, publisher and mythographer, a founder-member (and namer) of The Medway Poets , and a founder-member of the Stuckists art group. LIFE AND ART Bill Lewis was born in Maidstone , England. His father was a farm worker and shepherd. He attended a secondary modern school and left in 1968 with no qualifications, getting jobs unloading trucks in supermarkets. In 1975 with his friend, Rob Earl , he started what has since grown into a much bigger North Kent Scene, with a series of poetry readings called ''Outcrowd'' in a pub by the River Medway in Maidstone. In 1976 he had a breakdown, attempted suicide and spent three months in a psychiatric ward. In 1977 he went to Medway College Of Art And Design on a year Foundation Art course, where Billy Childish was also a student. In 1979 joined up with Childish, Charles Thomson , Sexton Ming , Rob Earl and Miriam Carney to found The Medway Poets punk performance group. This was very successful in the region and beyond, performing at the Cambridge International Poetry Festival in 1981 and the subject of a TV South documentary the following year. 1978-82 he was the CSSD Porter at West Kent General Hospital, which provided subject matter for many of his poems at the time (since 1982 he has concentrated on creative work full-time, occasionally taking temporary jobs such as cleaning floors in Tesco and tomato-picking). He was friends at this time with Tracey Emin and edited her short stories for her first book, ''Six Turkish Tales'' (Hangman 1987). In 1999 he was one of the founding members of the Stuckist art group along with Childish, Thomson and Ming. This has since grown into an international movement in over 30 countries. Lewis has been featured prominently in all the key Stuckist shows, including the landmark exhibition '' The Stuckists Punk Victorian '' held in 2004 at the Walker Art Gallery for the Liverpool Biennial . He has stressed sincerity in art: "People are never sure if we are being ironic or not. We are not. We are coming from the heart." {Link without Title} Lewis has published six books of poetry and three of short stories; he has made five reading tours of the US and one of . He was a member of Liberation Theology School for Prophets, founded by the late Fr. Bert White. He was involved in ecological and spiritual campaigns which prompted the American poet, Martin Espada , to call him "the poet of the new paradigm". His writing has been translated into several languages. Most recently his poems were translated into Spanish by the Puerto Rican poet Naomi Ayala; several of his short stories were translated and published in Germany by Connie Lösch. He has also been a small press publisher under differing imprints, including the Lazerwolf Press. In 2005 he founded The Medway Delta Press with the aim of publishing some of the best work by North Kent writers, musicians and artists. The first project was a limited edition set of 3 CDs entitled ''Voices From The Medway Delta'', featuring work by Billy Childish, Sexton Ming, Chris Broderick, Pete Molinari, Bill Lewis, and other key names in the Medway scene. The Medway Delta Press has also published a DVD documentary by Carol Lynn on Stuckism, and has plans to publish various books of poems and short stories by writers such as Joe Machine , Sexton Ming and Michael O'Connor. He describes himself as a self-taught artist, and is obsessive about his work, sometimes repainting an image seventy or eighty times. He describes his painting ''God Is an Atheist: She Doesn't Believe in Me'': TRIVIA Bill Lewis googlism SEE ALSO '' by Bill Lewis]] FOOTNOTES REFERENCES
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