21.11.09

I always thought
that, when you smiled,
Groningen seemed a prettier place
to me
and the Grote Markt,
beneath my unsteady feet,
hugged me
like my father did
in his strong and quiet way.
It is always good,
when I am travelling,
to know
that I have friends
in many strange and different cities
and keys to many doors.
For nothing is ever fixed
or permanent.
Smiles are only fleeting
but one like yours
shines bright
in the very beer of sunlight;
especially,
in the anxious heart
of this Newcastle poet.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

16.11.09

from writer joachim zelter in tuebingen

Hi Keith,

Thank you for being one of the chosen readers of your lovely poems which you keep sending me and which I thoroughly enjoy reading - one of the rare examples of contemporary poetry which has something to say and which I can actually understand and even enjoy.

Many greetings from Tübingen awaiting to be cherished by more of your poetry, verse and music conjoined.

Joachim

DURHAM

Cobbled webs of my thoughts
hang around your lanes.
A brass band nestles in my head,
cosy as a bedbug.
I’m reading from a balcony
poems of Revolution.
It’s Gala Day and the words are lost
in the coal dust of your lungs.

Your dark satanic brooding Gaol
throws a blanket over blankness:
a grim era of second-hand visions
aches like a scab in a cell.
And rowing a punt up your Bishop’s arse
a shaft of sunlight on the river
strikes me only as true,
shining into the eyes of all the prisoners
swinging from Cathedral bells.

Old Durham Town, you imprison me
like a scream in a Salvation Army song,
release me soon:

someone
get ready to hug me.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

14.11.09

KEMMY'S LIMERICK MISCELLANY

Kemmy's Limerick Miscellany is a 423 page anthology of writing published by The Limerick Writers' Centre and edited by Denis O'Shaughnessy.

Kemmyʼs Limerick Miscellany is a continuation of the late Jim Kemmyʼs highly successful Limerick Anthology (1996) and Limerick Compendium (1997).
Editor of the Miscellany is Denis OʼShaughnessy, who has written several successful and acclaimed books on Limerick. Denis and Jim were classmates in the years of deprivation of the early 1950s, and both left secondary school shortly after starting to pursue respective trades, stone masonry and printing compositing.

Miscellany is a fitting title for this new publication, as the book, likened to Kemmyʼs Anthology and Compendium, will encompass excerpts from the writing of many diverse writers, poets and historians, novelists and journalists, local and otherwise.

Their impressions down the years of Limerick and its people, its history and lore, culture and sport, is the essence of a publication that will open pages that have long remained dormant, alongside those published in the last decade or so. An attractive miscellany as the title suggests, with something for everyone.

Kemmy’s Limerick Miscellany is also a tribute to Jim Kemmy’s huge literary contribution to the city and recognition of his achievement in awakening interest in local history, the spark of which he and other local enthusiasts helped to ignite so many years ago.

Kemmy's Limerick Miscellany is available online at www.kemmyslimerickmiscellany.com

also available from usual outlets priced €20.00 - paperback. ISBN: 978-09562810-0-5

For further details contact: Dominic Taylor; Tel: 087 2996409; E: limerickwriterscentre@gmail.com
For trade orders or to request a copy for review, please email: limerickwriterscentre@gmail.com

Enquiries to: The Limerick Writers' Centre, 12 Barringtons Street, Limerick, Ireland.
Email: limerickwriterscentre@gmail.com

FEATURED IN KEMMY'S LIMERICK MISCELLANY:

CHE GUEVARA IN HANRATTY’S HOTEL

All the beer mats turned red in Limerick
the night that rebel Doctor Che Lynch took a wander
along Glentworth Street,
pouring
the jingling city
down his throat
on this island of his ancestors.
With a beard
as dark as the comforting Guinness,
he slaked his ruggerman’s thirst,
his well-shaken mix of Irish and Galician roots,
by the night-soaked Shannon.

Thirty months later, he was dead in Bolivia;
smashed bones,
splintered beads
of a revolutionary’s sweat
rolling down the guttter.

Now, I am sending this green poem
to your own heaven, old Che;
for your spirited lapel,
a singing sprig of shamrock
to light up the culture shock
of your long wild hair.

You chanced it in Hanratty’s ‘Gluepot’ bar,
you plunged from the leaden sky
to chat up all this local talent
in the eloquent lilt of a roaring evening.

Mighty ‘Red Bird’,
icon at the bar,
no better or worse
than the barman
who served you
a pint or two of Irish love,
to make your heart
grow even bigger;
to set you up
for your flight
from Limerick,
‘three sheets to the wind’,
rocking across the mighty expanse
of the rolling drunk Atlantic to Havana,
to a certain
martyr’s death.

And, amid the glorious beauty
of trees,
in the murderous jungle
of brutal dreams,
we soaks
will remember you
and celebrate the night
you fell in with us.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

POEM FOR A LOCAL HISTORIAN

(in memory of Jim Kemmy 1936 -1997)

‘Old people mumbling
low in the night of change and of ageing
when they think you asleep and not listening -
and we wide awake in the dark,
as when we were children.’

(Desmond O’Grady)

'It was poignant,
when walking away from the graveyard
that very warm midday,
that the only sound which could be heard
after he was buried
was that of a member of his trade, a stonemason,
simply chipping away
at a monument.'

(Mary Jackman)

In this city, in every town, in every village,
there is this man
dusty with archives
and old snapshots;
this deep fellow
who digs out truths from scraps,
who drinks from a bowl of swirling voices
and makes sense of things,
makes sense
when all else
lies in chaos.

In his dreams,
wars are not dead.
They scream
from his books.
He will not let
the suffering go -
he owes the children that.
There is something noble
in his calling,
in his bearing.
His work is beautiful.

In this particular place,
you can call him 'Jim'.
You can see his face forever
in the autumn leaves,
the leaves of books,
and the dance of history,
a local historian
and carver of tales
so memorable
that every street must value his love:
the love of our people though the ages,
the love of learning,
the search for dignity
that underpins these lanes.

In Limerick,
Jim's imagination still blossoms
and keeps us rooted
in the drift of memory.
He teaches us lessons.
Listen to his spirit breathe
deep as the Shannon.
His voice forever flies
with the power of knowledge.

'Beautiful dreamer wake unto me,
Starlight and dewdrops are waiting for Thee.'

KEITH ARMSTRONG

Vismarkt

(for Rense Sinkgraven)

The Mayor is bothered
about the litter in my brain;
the dross of poems
spilled out onto bar floors
and the fishy streets of Groningen.
He prowls the gutters
of my verse,
seeking to tidy up
the rhymes
and times I slopped
erotic images
between the lines
of council meetings.
The detritus
from lost poetry readings
gathers up
in windy corners
on this market day,
curled up
into sodden memories,
dark with crumbling print.
This city’s flags
continue
to flap proud,
defiant
in the rampant northern breeze,
fingers of lost empires
forlornly
waving
at laughing girls
and daring boys
dashing headlong
over stinking bones.
You will not make me clean,
I am a dirty poet
whose head aches
with dark subversive thoughts.
I am not tidy,
my very speech
remains unruly
as a mad professor in the Huis de Beurs.
I will mess up your streets
with a dynamic anarchy
until a true democracy
makes a clean breast of things
and the road-sweepers
and dreamers
of the Vismarkt
share a green and wondrous world.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

11.11.09

LANGE GASSE 18

The leaves blow through the glass

as dreams float in the room

and people I have travelled with

climb up these timbered stairs.

Memories coat the walls,

days wander down the lane;

there is no telling where the tales

of drunken nights have gone.

Church-bells punctuate the moon,

screams open up the dawn,

and I see Jennifer lying there,

poems oozing from her smiles.

At morning, Ingrid, with her little hands,

brings coffee to my brain

and Karin calls at evening’s door

with wine to ease the pain.

All these dancing moments,

the dripping down of hours;

this house’s chest is heaving

with the loss of human touch.

I drink those sunken days

and know the gulps are fleeting

but the moonlight-stains on the empty bed

will show we bled

for love.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

YORK IS IN SPATE

York is in spate.

Schoolgirls run
the length of the Ouse.
They fill up the day
with their heaving breath,
faces flushed with sweltering youth,
juice of life running down their breasts.

And my eyes are watering
with the frustrated steam
rising from the Railway Museum;
the empty passion of the Minster.

As glistening ducks swim The Avenue,
wet typists bob through Saviourgate,
their fingers damp with history,
tingling with the touch of word-flow.

So cry me this river,
torrents of ale drown my throat.
Sup me a city,
soak me in song.
Let their warm blouses cling
to their gorgeous skin,
nipples erect with drops of rain.

We are flooded.
It gets everywhere
this stream of consciousness,
this welter of water,
pouring into archives,
gnawing at timber
and bones.

We have no control.
We cannot stem the tide of hours.
Our boat floats along stream,
urged on by the waves
of boys in a rush,
and dogs swimming like fish.

York is in spate
and I’m lost in its Shambles;
weary arms flapping,
up to the pits in it.
This Yorkshire Life,
and things I do not really understand:
the planes in the sea,
the girls,
and the ships
in the sky.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

10.11.09

armstrong live in neckartenzlingen!

local newspapers

I, too, mourn good local newspapers. But this lot just aren't worth saving

The idea of democratic flag-bearers died decades ago. I can count on one hand those brave enough to speak truth to power

- George Monbiot
- guardian.co.uk, Monday 9 November 2009 20.00 GMT

They are the pillars of the community, champions of the underdog, the scourge of corruption, defenders of free speech. Their demise could deal a mortal blow to democracy. Any guesses yet? How many of you thought of local newspapers?

But this is the universal view of the national media: local papers – half of which, on current trends, are in danger of going down in the next five years – are all that stand between us and creeping dictatorship.

Like my colleagues, I mourn their death; unlike them I believe it happened decades ago. For many years the local press has been one of Britain's most potent threats to democracy, championing the overdog, misrepresenting democratic choices, defending business, the police and local elites from those who seek to challenge them. Media commentators lament the death of what might have been. It bears no relationship to what is.

I'm prompted to write this by a remarkable episode in my home town, Machynlleth, which illustrates the problem everywhere. A battle has been raging here over Tesco's attempt to build a superstore on the edge of town. Its application received 685 letters of objection and five letters of support, but the town council, which appears to believe everything Tesco says, supports the scheme. The local paper, the Cambrian News, appears in turn to believe everything the council tells it.

A couple of weeks ago consultants hired by Powys county council published a retail impact assessment which supports the arguments put forward by the objectors. If the new store is built, the assessment says, it will cause trade in the centre to decline and generate longer and less sustainable shopping trips. How did the Cambrian News respond to this devastating blow to Tesco's application? By running a smear job on its front page.

According to the town clerk, the consultants had fabricated a complaint by the local butcher. They had claimed to represent his views in their assessment, saying that he feared he would be forced out of business by Tesco – "but they haven't even spoken to him!". The Cambrian News, ironically, ran this story without speaking to the butcher, the consultants, or, apparently, performing even the briefest check. Its only informants were the town clerk and the councillors, who lined up to say that the behaviour of the consultants was "disgusting", that they were "scaremongering" and that they should apologise to the butcher. It took me 30 seconds to discover that the story was completely untrue: the assessment says nothing about the butcher or his shop.

I asked the editor of the Cambrian News to tell me whether her reporter had read the assessment before filing his story, or whether anyone at the paper had checked it. Her response was priceless. "Any information that we obtain, we keep exclusively for the Cambrian News and do not pass it on to rival newspapers." I pointed out that I wasn't trying to steal her non-story, but asking her to defend her decision to publish it. She has not replied.

This petty affair is a synecdoche for the state of local journalism. Most local papers exist to amplify the voices of their proprietors and advertisers and other powerful people with whom they wish to stay on good terms. In this respect they scarcely differ from most of the national media. But they also contribute to what in Mexico is called caciquismo: the entrenched power of local elites. This is the real threat to local democracy, not the crumpling of the media empires of arrogant millionaires.

Since May, Roy Greenslade, professor of journalism at City University, has been running a series on the Guardian's website called "Why local papers count". It's a brave effort, but it demonstrates the opposite of what he sets out to show. In six months he has managed to provide just one instance of real journalism: a report by the Kentish Express on the inflated costs of upgrading a local road. Otherwise he appears to have found no example of local papers holding power to account.

There's one respect in which the local press is confronting power: by campaigning against the free papers published by local authorities. These, the papers say, are propaganda sheets, which provide a biased view of council business. Does that sound familiar? In his book Flat Earth News, Nick Davies cites a survey of press releases issued across two months by Northumberland county council. Ninety-six percent of them were turned into stories by local papers. In many cases the papers copied the releases verbatim; in no case did they add any information. They might as well have been published by the council.

The failures of the local press are often blamed on consolidation by the big media corporations, which have squeezed as much money out of their collapsing possessions as they can, leaving no funds for real journalism. Davies, for example, asked a reporter on a regional paper to keep a diary for a week. In just five days the reporter published 48 stories. He came across one original story in that period, but he didn't have time to pursue it, so he let it drop. Otherwise he just recycled old copy, lifted stories from other papers or simply concocted them.

But this is not the whole reason for the failure of the local press. The Cambrian News, for instance, is owned by the man who is universally hailed as the only success story in local publishing: Sir Ray Tindle. His company, which runs 230 papers, is independent, free from debt and booming, but it suffers from many of the diseases that afflict the rest of the press. When the Iraq war began, Tindle ordered his editors "to ensure that nothing appears in your newspapers which attacks the decision to conduct the war". His letter was reproduced in the Totnes Times, with the following comments. "In a brave move, which could easily be seen by some as censoring the news, Sir Ray ordered that once war in Iraq was declared his newspapers would not carry any more anti-war stories … As editorial manager of eight of Sir Ray's titles, I am proud to say I totally agree with his decision."

It's true that the vacuity and cowardice of the local papers has been exacerbated by consolidation, profit-seeking, the collapse of advertising revenues and a decline in readership. But even if they weren't subject to these pressures, they would still do more harm than good. Local papers defend the powerful because the powerful own and fund them. I can think of only two local newspapers that consistently hold power to account: the West Highland Free Press and the Salford Star. Are any others worth saving? If so, please let me know. Yes, we need a press that speaks truth to power, that gives voice to the powerless and fights for local democracy. But this ain't it.

8.11.09

THE DARKENED ROOM WEBSITE

Interview with Keith Armstrong in Fitzgerald's, Whitley Bay

TDR: Keith, successful artists always combine talent with the ability to promote themselves. Do you still have to sell poetry, or is your poetry and performance more or less sustaining?

Keith: Well, I still have to keep pushing. For quite a few years now, I have been working freelance and you can easily be forgotten. Poetry is my craft, both on the page and in performance, so I burn with the desire to get my work across to as many people as possible. I am going to Prague again soon, performing in cabaret settings, where there might be 20 to 30 people, but I like doing that; the vibes, the interaction and the feedback you get.

TDR: I get the sense of great passion for your work. What has poetry done for you personally? Has it helped you to understand yourself; be the real Keith Armstrong?

Keith: The real Keith Armstrong? Yeah! There is a poem I can send you that I wrote the other week, because, believe it or not, I’m not the only Keith Armstrong on this planet. There is another one in Newcastle, who is a record producer, and he’s a bit of a nuisance, because he’s become quite famous. We met on the Metro a few years ago and we compared notes.

TDR: There is frustration, anger and love – all the emotions in your work. Have we lost the plot somewhere with what some see as a destructive, insensitive society today?

Keith: I like politics with passion; not the blandness of Blair. Then, I’ve never been a card-carrying member of the Communist Party either. What I breathe is anarchy, but anarchy in a constructive sense.

TDR: Why Whitley Bay? Is this a new refuge for you?

Keith: Well, I was born in Newcastle. My father was a shipyard worker, as you may have gathered; my mother was a nurse and we came to Whitley Bay as a kind of dormitory, really – and for a slightly posher house. I like to be beside the sea. If I am not by the sea, I feel stranded. Whitley Bay does that for me. Of course, Whitley Bay has its Spanish City; I don’t know if you’ve heard about that? I 've written a poem called 'Garcia Lorca in Whitley Bay', so I feel that I can write poetry about any area.

TDR: We all come from the North East, which encompasses a vast area. Do we need to work together in the different regions more effectively? You have done much to bring people together; how can we bring all the pieces into a whole?

Keith: Well, I’m an inveterate networker. I do believe in making links with Teesside and Wearside, but the idea of creating a community of poets rather appals me. You don’t do this kind of thing just because you can get a grant for it. I don’t mind getting a grant, but you have to respect the complexities and sometimes the historical rivalries at times between Newcastle and Middlesbrough, for example.

TDR: Your CV reads like a ‘Who’s-Who’ of poetry and performance. Does poetry support your lifestyle, or do you support the poetry?

Keith: I think it’s integrated. There isn’t any separation between me, as a human being, trying to struggle through life and being a poet. I’m often found in the back of a taxi, late at night, reciting my poems to a bemused cabman – which I’m rather proud of!

TDR: You have travelled extensively and participated actively in the international poetry scene. Is good poetry, your poetry, as readily understood, applauded, in fact, in Prague as it is in Gateshead?

Keith: It’s probably more popular in Prague than in Gateshead! You know, Prague has such a long cultural history behind it and I go there in cafes and read my poetry in English. But there are a lot of ex-pats in Prague. It’s quite difficult to get through to the genuine Czechs. You have to cut through these ex-pats to get to them. But I do go out of my way to understand the Czech culture, whether it’s Havel or Kafka; to make an attempt to understand the place, not to go in there only on an ego-trip.

TDR: The poetry talent in our region partly stems from strong qualities of survival, humour and unpretentiousness, yet we are somewhat isolated from the London scene. How do we stack up in the Capital?

Keith: I never had a good relationship with London. I find it something of a beast, really, feeding off the provinces. I realise that London is really a collection of villages. I’m part-Celt, part-Viking, part-Northumbrian. That’s why I’m more headed towards Europe than London; more headed towards Edinburgh. Armstrong is a Scottish name. I identify more with the border ballad culture or tradition. I work quite a bit with folk musicians, Northumbrian pipers and singers. I like to express my roots and my history – it’s very hard to put that across in London!

TDR: How can we make poetry a viable economic commodity? Artists can survive by painting Whitley Bay. Can poets do that?

Keith: Well, I live – I survive! I put in appeals to the Arts Council of England. I try to charm the pants off the Literature Officer and frequently fail! Well, I can get occasional subsidies; I put in some part-time teaching, but I also put in applications to key foundations, not just Arts Council North East. I diversify! I think that you have to commit to muddling through, rather than getting rich.

THE OTHER KEITH ARMSTRONG