Columnist Zahra Barri speaks to Kentish poets Charlotte Ansell and Jake Nathan ahead of their appearances at Medway Lit Fest 2026
When I meet Medway poets Charlotte Ansell and Jake Nathan, I naively think that they can’t get any more different. Charlotte’s art is on the page, compared with Jake’s being on the stage.
Charlotte’s latest collection Amittere (meaning loss) was longlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize. She writes on the transient, ephemeral, constantly evolving nature of relationships, recaptured through memory of place.
Topography and geography (wahey!) are key and work as metaphors for changing landscapes within relationships. In the titled poem, Amittere, she mentions geography GCSE(!) in a technical description - verbatim right off the syllabus - of the soluble (her child) having tension between the denser rock (the parent) and collapsing under gravity and weathering.
“The erosion of the cliffs leading to pieces of rock becoming separate over time seemed an exact representation of how a parent has to separate from their child,” Charlotte says. “It was a gift when my daughter started explaining the process. This happens too slowly to be imperceptible… just how it feels with a child becoming independent… you aren’t aware of it until they leave home.”
It’s a tender collection. Not to sound too Simone de Beauvoir about it, but, as all great art should, it did make me contemplate not only the meaning of life but the movement of it. Charlotte is what elite literary circles would call existential.
Jake Nathan
On the other hand, Jake Nathan is Medway’s answer to Stormzy meets Professor Green. He’s a beat poet whose album is sensitive and bold, speaking out on the heaviness of performative masculinity. He deals with a juxtaposition of his physical self (alpha masculine aesthetic) juxtaposed with a sensitive, queer interiority, referring to his sexuality as “heteroflexible”.
His expression of fancying Jonathan from Queer Eye (don’t we all?) in Celebrate from his Bare Necessities album is his “coming out poem”. The content brilliantly opposes the form - at times it’s audibly reminiscent of The Streets. The vulnerability of tough meets soft epitomises what all great writing should do - work against stereotypes.
He says that masculinity is a real focus. “Being a dad to two boys made me examine the way I was raised and the way that we raise boys in this country,” says Jake. “There are so many toxic things that we are taught, both intentionally and tacitly, that we have to unlearn them.”
It’s then I realise that they might seem chalk and cheese, but they are both alike in dignity in our fair Medway, where we lay our ‘Cene.
Charlotte Ansell
Charlotte is a mother of two children, one of whom is trans. In poem My Child Buys a They/Them Badge, Charlotte alludes to the start of their transition and it is the parent who is also grasping new identities.
“Trying to be supportive about something that felt confusing has become easier over time,” she says. Both poets navigate gender identities, using the genre of poetry differently. As a novice myself, I find poetry simultaneously intimidating and inclusive. At school I struggled to understand T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land but adored Bukowski, famously drunk… it was more ‘Wasted Land’. I took the opportunity to pick the brains of Charlotte and Jake on poetry’s allusivity, inclusivity, words vs symbols and updating the way we teach: pedagogical poetics!
Firstly, what is poetry?
Charlotte: A lifeline! I also ascribe to Wordsworth’s definition – “emotion recollected in tranquillity”.
Jake: Words that make you feel.
Describe your poetry:
Charlotte: Hopeful, narrative-based, heartfelt.
Jake: Honest, authentic, open.
What’s the first poem you read that made you want to be a poet?
Charlotte: A poem by Henry Normal. He writes in everyday language about everyday things. I hadn’t found that before.
Jake: Def Poetry Jam.
Which poem is the poem you wished you had written?
Charlotte: I love The Rungs by Benjamin Gucciardi. I wish I could write a poem that doesn’t gloss over trauma. I love the way it ends not with a grand flourish but an everyday image of “two Starburst wrappers on the ground”.
What was your poetry education like? Jake, you go into schools to talk about creativity - how’s that?
Jake: I love working with working-class kids in particular. It’s such an important thing for kids to know how to express themselves. We should get local poets into schools. Hearing someone who sounds like you makes it feel accessible. If we can introduce poetry in an accessible way, then the kids who develop an interest in poetry will find their way to the canon.
Charlotte: I liked learning how to analyse poetry. I studied Gerald Manley Hopkins and at the time I hated his work but admired his skill.
I recently read TS Eliot’s essay on ‘Tradition and the individual talent’ about the nature of poetry being a “series of images symbolic of emotion” and that poetry is “not a turning loose of emotion but an escape from it”. Does this resonate with you?
Charlotte: I think it’s more about a poem being a container for emotion than an escape. I feel words are more important than images.
Jake: It’s the words that create the images and make you feel the emotions. But then again, you should probably pay attention to T.S. Eliot’s opinion!
What image would you use to evoke your poetry collection as a whole? In my case I am writing a collection about dating, so it would be Edvard Munch’s The Scream.
Charlotte: Marc Chagall’s The Window, 1924. I’d like to hope my collection is a window onto something beautiful even if a lot of my poems can be bleak.
Jake: The Desperate Man, by Gustave Courbet. He looks how I often feel when I look at the world.
DATES:
Charlotte is at Sun Pier House on 12th November with Dorothy Lehane and Theresa Lola.
Jake is performing at Pier fest, an all-day music event as part of Medway River Literature Festival on 21st November.
www.medwayriverlit.co.uk/event-details-registration/pierfest
Zahra Barri’s Workshop: Novel Writing - The Use of ‘Traumedy’ takes place at the Nucleus Arts Centre on Sunday 1st November.
www.medwayriverlit.co.uk/event-details-registration/workshop-novel-writing-the-use-of-traumedy
We talk about the 6AM crew, not having a genre and leaving things to the last minute…