Bill Lewis
| Bill Lewis | |
|---|---|
Lewis in Canterbury, 2013
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| Born |
William Lewis 1 August 1953 Maidstone, Kent, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Known for | Painting, poetry, fiction |
| Movement | Stuckism |
William "Bill" Lewis (born 1 August 1953) is an English artist, story-teller, poet and mythographer. He was a founder-member of The Medway Poets and of the Stuckists art group.
Bill Lewis was born in Maidstone, Kent, England. He attended Westborough Secondary Modern School and left in 1968 with no qualifications. In 1975, with his friend, Rob Earl, he started a series of poetry readings called Outcrowd at the Lamb pub, later renamed Drakes' Crab and Oyster House, by the River Medway in Maidstone. Both Charles Thomson and Billy Childish, the later co-founders of the Stuckists group, read at these events.
He spent a year unloading trucks in Cheeseman department store in Maidstone, then in 1976 he had a nervous breakdown, attempted suicide and spent three months in Crossfield psychiatric ward, West Malling. 1977–1978, he studied Foundation Art at Medway College of Art and Design, at the same time as Childish and Thomas von Üricht, another future Stuckist.
In 1979, his interest in Berlin Cabaret, combined with the current punk culture, led him to joining up with Childish, Charles Thomson, Sexton Ming, Rob Earl and Miriam Carney to found the anarchic poetry performance group, The Medway Poets, which he named. The group performed in colleges, pubs and festivals, including the international Cambridge Poetry Festival in 1981. It was the subject of a TV South documentary the following year. In Lewis's performances, he "jumped on a chair, threw his arms wide (at least once hitting his head on the ceiling)."
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