A write pair: Interview with Medway's Barry and Sam Fentiman Hall
Columnist Zahra Barri talks to notorious Kent writing duo Sam and Barry Fentiman-Hall, who form the very backbone of Medway’s literary landscape
There’s something hugely romantic about literary couples. Sam and Barry Fentiman-Hall are Kent’s answer to Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes (minus the head in the oven), Nora Ephron and Karl Bernstein (minus Watergate scandal), Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre (minus existentialism) and Beyonce and Jay-Z (minus Barry getting punched by Sam’s sister in a lift) all rolled into one. However, they humbly try to dispel my sentimentalism when they tell me they are more Gomez and Morticia.
I met them last year at Medway River Literature Festival - an initiative they set up as a home for the ‘punky’ wordsmiths of Medway and that has enabled a programme eclectic as it is enriching. What sets this literary festival apart from others is its niche focus on musical biographies such as Cosey Fanni Tutti (Throbbing Gristle) and JimBob (Carter USM). This year they have Budgie from Siouxsie & The Banshees. Another unique aspect of the festival is that the couple are keen to facilitate conversations around climate change. Catch Abi Daré, winner of the first Climate Fiction Prize, on 15th November at Chatham Library.
The couple’s creation and curation of Medway Literature Festival is impressive, but this isn’t their only community literary initiative. Another admirable joint-project is Confluence magazine, which is a work of art, looking and reading like Kent’s answer to The New Yorker. Upon its pages, locality meets globality - new writers from Kent mix with older, more iconic, names, creating an enthralling canon.
Remarkably, they are both prolific with their individual writing projects, too. Most recently I attended Medway Open Studios Festival, where I saw Sam’s fabulous Three Instances Of Not Meeting Jarvis Cocker comic series. Meanwhile Barry has published numerous poetry collections, described as “honest and sharp… a lyrical dance that makes Medway almost beautiful”. Almost beautiful. That’s Medway! Here’s our chat…
What came first, literature or love?
BFH: Sam was doing literary initiatives before I met her - these increased and mutated into Wordsmithery (their umbrella collective). She was also writing plays. I was a bedsit psychogeographer who had never had anything published, but I used to put musical events on. I wouldn’t be a writer had we not met.
Awww… guessing you have a great literary ‘Meet Cute’?
Int. Day. South Bank Centre.
SAM, a red-haired, bookish woman wearing a My Neighbour Totoro cardigan, has just been to see Iain Sinclair & Alan Moore in conversation. BARRY, a tall bald man, wearing a black fedora and two-tone corduroy flares. They are outside. It is raining.
Barry: Are you waiting for the Catbus?
Sam: How did you know?
Barry: Your attire gave it away…
Maybe it happened like that… or maybe not…
Do you inspire each other?
SFH: Tangentially we do, but our projects are different. We sometimes overlap. Barry’s interest in Medway history has fed into a couple of projects that I’m working on: a graphic novel about Medway Victorian botanical artist Anne Pratt and Believe In Me, a story about Greek gods stranded in Medwegia.
Medwegia! You have a great way of taking words and making them even wordier!! Like wordsmithery! Tell us about that…
We’ve always wanted to put Medway writing on the map, and crucially to have Medway creatives at the heart. That is what drives Medway River Lit and Confluence. We run an occasional collaborative literary project called An Assemblance of Judicious Heretics. The project promotes a sense of community and produces great art, too. We will run it again at some point.
Congrats on Confluence magazine. The beautiful covers, esoterically curated literature from local writers… it’s dreamy!
We’re proud of our artists’ covers! The most recent by Jio Butler is excellent. Confluence is “where Medway meets the world”. A novice local writer will share pages with a national prize-winner.
What are your plans for the future, Sam - ever gonna meet Jarvis? Barry - what will you do if Sam runs off with Cocker? So tragic, but imagine the poetry it’ll inspire!
BFH: I’ve been semi trolling Jarvis’s Insta with links to Sam’s book, but he’s not taken the bait. Should that cataclysm arise, I might finally have the material to take a run at The Forward Prize…
How did you get into writing?
SFH: My first play written at 16 won a national prize, but at university I went into student journalism. I’ve written short stories and have a few ‘work-in-progress’ novels, but since relearning how to draw during the Covid lockdown graphic novels are where I’m currently at.
BFH: I wrote as a kid up till my early 20s, but where I lived, and my situation, meant that if there were any avenues to pursue it, I didn’t know what they were. Then, I found a copy of Iain Sinclair’s Lights Out for the Territory in a bargain bin in Middlesbrough and was hooked. I didn’t know you could write like that and I wanted to.
Sounds like Sinclair gave you the writing bug?
BFH: Iain Sinclair originally. Then James Baldwin and Gil Scott-Heron. More recently, Caroline Bird (who is also appearing at Medway River Lit!).
SFH: For me, Bryan Talbot - Alice in Sunderland.
You can catch Zahra’s Historical Fiction Novel Writing Workshop at the festival on 16th November at Nucleus Arts, Chatham
You can get her novel Daughters of the Nile here: www.amazon.co.uk/Daughters-Nile-Unbound-Firsts-Title/dp/1800183127
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