Emily Hay is a lifetime south Londoner, fascinated by the changing city, writing poetry, short stories and longer. Growing up in the 1970s, she was immersed in the previous generation’s narratives of world war and consumed far too many Biggles, Victor comic strip and war stories. Her poetry and prose has been published by Lancaster Litfest; by the Coffee House poetry magazine; by the Riggwelter Press; by Aôthen Magazine; by the Lavender Review; by Exeter Mind’s Comic Verse Anthology; by City Lit Between the Lines; and as winner of Greenwich River of Words.
Pallant House Gallery exhibition autumn 2025
‘Seeing each other: portraits of artists’
The men have arrived together at the party.
Gilbert and George are here, twice, impersonating each other.
Cedric Morris is more discreet with a macaw; paints
His suited lover Arthur with a map of freedom in Morocco.
The two Roberts are hand on shoulder, in your face,
Spectators in the stands ready to applaud. They urge us on to more.
Kitaj ‘Plays for Total Stakes’ – David and Peter’s portraits interlocked –
Goes all out to say it’s 1968, on a wedding plate.
The men do not hesitate. Wives and babies are models to be
Sculpted in stone for cathedral naves – trophies immortalised.
Bratby paints his wife naked with goose-pimples, wide-eyed,
In the kitchen with beer glasses – we know who cleared up afterwards.
Where are the women together? Not even a domestic sketch drawn
By firelight, the tin bath in the back room, the curtains pulled tight.
Here, the only women holding out a brush for each other are friends, not lovers.
Ish Myerscough offers herself and Chantal Joffe, pregnant the same summer,
Marks birthdays and mutual history in cartoon cards: ‘It’s that time again’
To stand bare-skinned, easel-to-easel and paint what we’ve become.
Gluck is here among the morning bathers, after swim, gamine and topless,
A decorous counterpoint to fully naked Venus. Not looking out at us.
Nothing of hers is here. We do not know how she drew her lover’s face.
The men are visible, even when illegal. They play games, half-unzipped like Bacon.
They are provocative. Robert and Robert cheer the world on.
Better in California in sharp sunlight, but hiding artistically in plain sight.
Where are the women, then? Who saw each other but remain unseen.
© Emily Hay