‘Cabbage Patch’ by Denise Bennett is a poetic reflection on a painting by Portsmouth artist Edward King (1862 – 1951). Bennett’s poetry often draws on artworks displayed at Portsmouth Museum and Art Gallery and this one reflects on an unhappy period in King’s life, but also of the restorative and salutary effects of art and landscape. As Bennett reflects, ‘Edward King was a patient at St James’ psychiatric hospital, Portsmouth for over 25 years. During WW2 he was appointed as the war artist for the city and painted many scenes of the blitz damage. He also painted the grounds of the hospital. He originally studied art at Leipzig and by 1904 he had exhibited 54 paintings at the Royal Academy. He was committed to St James’ in 1925 after he suffered a breakdown when his wife died. He died of a stroke in 1951’.
With her usual keen eye for the passage of time, the poem vividly collides King’s life with the present, as building works go on at the site, and does a beautiful job of maintaining the city’s cultural memory against the depredations of time. The poem, perhaps one of Bennett’s finest, is quoted here with her kind permission.
Cabbage Patch
After the painting, The Cabbage Field by Edward King 1862–1951
I step out from the ward
into the quiet afternoon –
load my brush to paint
the thin, white, drum-skin sky
that stretches far away
to the house on the hill –
start to paint the cabbage field,
vegetables laid out in tight rows
like the hospital bedsteads,
so close, we scrabble up from the foot
to climb in. No space to pray.
By day, patients come
in their rough grey uniforms
to till the field, free
to take a daily dose of salty air.
Warmed by the sun,
buffeted by the wind, they sing.
Today surveyors tramp the site
in hi-vis jackets, hard hats,
with measuring sticks, theodolites,
clipboards – busy making plans
for executive houses.
No one remembers the farm now:
the thatched barn,
row of cool, cypress trees,
potting sheds, the piggery,
cabbage patch –
patient’s hands that worked the land.
Denise Bennett was born in Festing Road Southsea and has lived locally all her life. She had her first poem accepted by her school magazine, The Hot Potato, when she attended John Pounds School, Portsea. As many people know, John Pounds was a pioneer of education for ragged children in Portsmouth. Denise has an MA in creative writing and is a widely published, prize winning poet. She was awarded the inaugural Hamish Canham Prize by the Poetry Society in 2004. Denise has three excellent collections: Planting the Snow Queen (2011) and Parachute Silk (2015) and Water Chits (2017). She has also written a sequence of poems about the loss of HMS Royal George which foundered off Spithead in 1782, with the loss of over 900 lives. In 2010 she co-edited the wonderful anthology, This Island City: Portsmouth in Poetry with Maggie Sawkins and Dale Gunthorp.
Local history often inspires Denise’s work and many of her poems are about specific areas in the city. Denise is the stanza rep for the Poetry Society the secretary of the Portsmouth Poetry Society. She has been a long time member of the Tongues and Grooves poetry and music club, and often reads her work in public. She has taught creative writing for Portsmouth College, as part of their adult education programme, for twenty eight years, and runs poetry workshops for Portsmouth City Museum and Portsmouth libraries as part of Bookfest. She continues to run poetry workshops in community settings and also facilitates two writing groups for Havant U3A. In 2014, she was involved, alongside local artist and photographer, Jacky Dillon, and other local poets, in a photography and art project, England Remembered about the First World War. This culminated in a presentation at Art Space in Brougham Road, Southsea. In 2019, as part of the Dark Side Port Side project, the digital walking trail called Sailortown she made a poetry film, Blossom Alley which can be heard here. Denise continues to find much inspiration for her poetry in the city.
If you have any comments, queries, or suggestions about any of the map entries, please contact the Map Director, Mark Frost : mark.frost@port.ac.uk