You really like Kent

Were you born the county

Alas no but I consider myself

An honorary member

A Man of Kent

If I could be so bold


I rather like your poetry Joe

I have not written much about Kent

Bishopsbourne was a lovely poem

I enjoyed its slow creation

But there are others

Whose pen is far superior to mine


Jocelyn Brooke imagines the Bishopsbourne of his childhood

As an idyll

A kind of an English

Middle-Class Eden

He seems to recall the village

Held in a perpetual trance

Of hot summer afternoons

What are your thoughts Joe

Well apart from the motorway

At the top of the hill

This area has not changed a great deal

These awful roads were always

Going to scar the landscape

But the same might have been said

About the railways over a century ago

Yet we have accepted and loved the railways

For as long as they have existed

But the same cannot be said of motorways


The Elham Valley has suffered scars

Like many other areas of Kent

It was all very sad and preventable

As it was tinged with a rancid corruption


Did Brooke witness this vandalism

He would have been aware

Of what was happening

He had seen it all before

As the Elham Valley Railway

Died a painful death in 1947


The Sins of Our Fathers

The Tyranny of the Stupid

What is the meaning of progress

It is a question without an answer



Martha interview Joe