‘Agnes Weston’ by Portsmouth poet Denise Bennett brilliantly captures a vibrant period in the city’s maritime history, celebrating the life and philanthropic work of Dame Agnes Weston The poem, which is typical of Bennett’s ability to evoke a scene in few words, is quoted here with the kind permission of the poet. Bennett offers the following explanations of some of the references in the poem:

‘To show a leg’: a nautical phrase referring to the call that was made in the sailors quarters when ships were about to set sail. To ‘show a leg’ allowed female visitors to dress and leave. HMS Serpent was a torpedo cruiser, wrecked in 1890 with the loss of all but three of its crew of 176. To be ‘three sheets to the wind’ is to be drunk.

Agnes Weston
Dame Agnes Weston 1840 – 1918 noted for her work with the Royal Navy

When Aggie, queen of the blue jackets;
opened her ‘Sailors Rest’ in Pompey;
it was somewhere for young tars
to sling their hooks.

Wholesome billets:
home from home –
a clean cabin, cotton sheets,
for a few bob a night,
no booze, no sleaze, no floozies;
cheap square meals,
a bible in every room.
Everything above board.
No need for someone to shout
show a leg, in the mornings –

She ran a tight ship.
No argy bargy or decking.
No one sailing
three sheets to the wind –

but when HMS Serpent was lost
with most hands, she grieved
with the widows, raised funds;
enough money to find them all
a safe haven.

Denise Bennett was born in Festing Road Southsea and has lived locally all her life. She had her first poem accepted by her school magazine, The Hot Potato, when she attended John Pounds School, Portsea. As many people know, John Pounds was a pioneer of education for ragged children in Portsmouth. Denise has an MA in creative writing and is a widely published, prize winning poet. She was awarded the inaugural Hamish Canham Prize by the Poetry Society in 2004. Denise has three excellent collections: Planting the Snow Queen (2011) and Parachute Silk (2015) and Water Chits (2017). She has also written a sequence of poems about the loss of HMS Royal George which foundered off Spithead in 1782, with the loss of over 900 lives. In 2010 she co-edited the wonderful anthology, This Island City: Portsmouth in Poetry with Maggie Sawkins and Dale Gunthorp.

Local history often inspires Denise’s work and many of her poems are about specific areas in the city. Denise is the stanza rep for the Poetry Society the secretary of the Portsmouth Poetry Society. She has been a long time member of the Tongues and Grooves poetry and music club, and often reads her work in public. She has taught creative writing for Portsmouth College, as part of their adult education programme, for twenty eight years, and runs poetry workshops for Portsmouth City Museum and Portsmouth libraries as part of Bookfest. She continues to run poetry workshops in community settings and also facilitates two writing groups for Havant U3A. In 2014, she was involved, alongside local artist and photographer, Jacky Dillon, and other local poets, in a photography and art project, England Remembered about the First World War. This culminated in a presentation at Art Space in Brougham Road, Southsea. In 2019, as part of the Dark Side Port Side project, the digital walking trail called Sailortown she made a poetry film, Blossom Alley which can be heard here. Denise continues to find much inspiration for her poetry in the city.

If you have any comments, queries, or suggestions about any of the map entries, please contact the Map Director, Mark Frost : mark.frost@port.ac.uk