Published by Four Shores, Sept 2005
"The Isle of Sheppey may not be the end of the world.But you can see it from here."
For a year from March 2004 to early 2005, Ros Barber researched the Isle of Sheppey in North Kent, with the intent of collecting its many legends (ancient and modern) and turning them into a series of poems connected to four walks around the island. With the highest poverty indicators of any area in the South East (in terms of crime, unemployment and literacy), and a huge amount of unsympathetic development around Sheerness, the island is also home to unscathed landscapes of great beauty - the Eastern end of the island being perhaps the only place in the South East of England that could honestly be described as a wilderness.
From being snobbed by the Romans to being settled by Viking, from a psychotic Crusader to an East End criminal, from the world's first industrial dispute to a sunken WW2 Liberty Ship so stuffed with explosives that it could still, potentially, wipe the island off the map and rearrange large parts of Kent, Sheppey has many tales to tell.
Not the Usual Grasses Singing: A Journey Around The Isle of Sheppey is a series of linked poems written entirely in rhyming couplets, published by Four Shores to coincide with the launch of the Four Shores: Artworks for Sheppey project in September 2005. It includes a moving narrative poem in which Ann Parker, wife of Nore Mutineer Richard Parker, relates the events of the Nore Mutiny in 1797. Additional artworks have been produced by visual artist Stephen Turner, architect Simon Barker, and film-maker Abbe Leigh-Fletcher.