The Man With the Gallows Eyes: Selected Poetry, 1980-2005

by Billy Childish

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published April 1, 2007

About the author

Born Steven John Hamper, he is a cult figure in America, Europe and Japan. Billy Childish is by far the most prolific painter, poet, and song-writer of his generation. In a twenty year period he has published over 40 collections of his poetry, recorded over 100 full-length independent LP’s and produced over 2000 paintings.
Billy Childish left Secondary education at 16, an undiagnosed dyslexic. Refused an interview at the local art school he entered the Naval Dockyard at Chatham as an apprentice stonemason. During the following six months (the artist’s only prolonged period of employment), he produced some six hundred drawings in ‘the tea huts of hell'. On the basis of this work he was accepted into St Martin’s School of Art to study painting. However, his acceptance was short-lived and before completing the course he was expelled for his outspokenness and unorthodox working methods. With no qualifications and no job prospects Childish then spent some 12 years ‘painting on the dole’, developing his own highly personal writing style and producing his art independently.

Reviews

[Warwick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Billy Childish leaned over my shoulder as I bought this book – I'm not talking metaphorically now, I mean he actually did – it was a place in Whitstable and he leaned over me with a betting-shop pencil and signed the front cover with a little hangman figure. And the thing is I didn't recognise him for a few seconds, I had the sudden alarming impression that a random tramp had wandered into the bookshop and started doodling on my new purchases. Then I saw the moustache and it clicked. He said something like, ‘There y'are, mate,’ before shambling off.

Childish has had a tough life and it shows in his face – not really in a bad way, he just looks weathered and interesting. If you know Medway you'll know the kind of environment he was dealing with when he grew up. His father was a violent alcoholic often not around, he was sexually abused as a child, he was and is severely dyslexic, he was kicked out of art school for writing ‘toilet wall humour’. Worked on the docks. Lived on the dole for 15 years writing poetry and playing the guitar and trying to paint. He ended up with a major drinking problem, as well he might.



He is not the greatest poet but there is something very appealing about his rawness, his honesty. Sometimes he's portrayed as the English Bukowski, and although he really doesn't have Hank's talent, he does make up for it in diversity – beyond poetry he's an accomplished musician (stripped down and underproduced, try this for instance) and a very interesting painter who founded a minor British art movement called Stuckism. (This was famously named after a comment yelled at him by his then-girlfriend, Tracey Emin – ‘Your paintings are stuck, you are stuck!’ – as recorded in one of his poems, which sadly is not included in this collection.) His excellent woodcuts are scattered through this book.

I remember after I got this I was reading one of the early poems, romantically entitled ‘when the spunk hits yur in the face’, which begins

then this bloke says
‘yu nans dead’ n its the same man
who raped you
then it starts raining
then somebody makes yu nob sore
then all this spunk starts flying atcha

And I was reading this while eating pitta bread dipped in Waitrose extra virgin olive oil houmous, and I remember thinking ‘I'm probably not the target audience.’

At his best, Childish finds beauty – no, that's not strong enough – he forces beauty out of his own resources of pain, loss and sadness, teasing little epiphanies out of the beat-up everyday urban environment of Chatham.

it wasnt a rose
in winter
it was a dirty pice
of tissue cought
in a hawthorn bush
but somehow it was
better than a rose

Though compared to him my background is insanely comfortable, he is a poet who extols longing and failure and drunken nocturnal revelations so there is plenty to relate to even just stylistically. Reading him gives me flashbacks to all the evenings that ended with a raw throat and that sort of exhausted narcotic melancholy that you can only feel waiting for the nightbus next to someone that doesn't want you to kiss them. A piece like ‘15 qwid’ for instance is a kind of poetic version of The Pogues's ‘Rainy Night in Soho’:

walking threw lester sq
at 10.35pm
with her hard on
my shoulder

i rip up my last 15 qwid
and sprinkle it over
her head
like
confetti

thats the only type
of wedding shes gonna get

If being broke and drunk and bored and horny in London means nothing to you then these poems perhaps will not speak to you at all. I'm not sure. I think their quality is mainly in their referential appeal, but I could be wrong. Of course, you still have to deal with a lot of poems that just try to represent moments in his life that he needs to get out, which you may not be sure quite what to do with (one, fairly typical, begins: ‘my girlfriend / was eating codine / and i was in / the park fuckin / this big-titted / 18 year old whore’…all right then).

I like Billy Childish. He is himself. He's worth reading alongside someone like Nicola Barker, for a different view of Medway. And because not many other British poets are in a position tell you about these things.

i am billy childish
ex-poet
and failed suiside
late nite vomiter of truth and lies
kisser of the arses of girls
like the stars of god
riter of poems to lick
the thighs of the dead
for ex- lovers to denounce
and teachers to hate
wishing to paint my life
and  to never let my
voice quieten

[Katya Mills · Rating 5 out of 5]

billy childish.
my favorite dyslexic
poet. naked and unafraid. stabbing
wood with a blade