A VERY BRITISH KILLING

On 15 September 2003 Baha Mousa, a hotel receptionist, was killed by British Army troops in Iraq. He had been arrested the previous day in Basra and was taken to a military base for questioning. For forty-eight hours he and nine other innocent civilians had their heads encased in sandbags and their wrists bound by plastic handcuffs and had been kicked and punched with sustained cruelty.

A succession of guards and casual army visitors took pleasure in beating the Iraqis, humiliating them, forcing them into stress positions in temperatures up to 50 degrees Centigrade, and watching them suffer in the dirty concrete building where they were held. Other soldiers, officers, medics, the padre, did not take part in the violence but they saw what was happening and did nothing to stop it. Some knew it was wrong. Some weren't sure. Some were too scared to intervene. But none said anything or enough until it was far too late and Baha Mousa had been beaten to death.

This book tells the inside story of these crimes and their aftermath. It examines the institutional brutality, the bureaucratic apathy, the flawed military police inquiry and the farcical court martial that attempted to hold people criminally responsible. Even though a full public inquiry reported its findings into the crimes in September 2011, its mandate restricted what it could say. The full story, told with the power of a true-crime expose or court-room drama, shows how this was not simply about a few bad men or 'rotten apples'. It shines a light on all those involved in the crime and its investigation, from the lowest squaddie to the elite of the army and politicians in Cabinet. What it reveals is devastating.

BACK IN LIMERICK! PHOTOS: MICHAEL STEPHENSON

WE CHANGE AT LIMERICK JUNCTION

We change at Limerick Junction.

Rain knocks the smiles off our faces,

the sun glows and exposes the dust in the faint traces of our poems.

We change at Limerick Junction.

Weather makes our eyes fade,

the hours grow tired of breathing in the pain of the world.

We change at Limerick Junction.

Hearts thunder along the crazy rails,

the weight off our feet lands with a thump on the daily platform.

We change at Limerick Junction.

Carry gifts for old friends,

the urge to go on trailing poetry along the lines.

We change at Limerick Junction.

Girls get too young for us,

the flesh weakens with the passage of whiskey.

We change at Limerick Junction.

Air races in the manes of horses,

the money drains from our exhausted pockets.

We change at Limerick Junction.

Jump from one train to another,

the inexhaustible desire to write a better verse.

We change at Limerick Junction.

Words are why we laugh,

beauty is what makes us want to live.

We change at Limerick Junction.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

MAD MARTINS!

http://www.northernvoicescommunityprojects.co.uk/Northern_Voices_Community_Projects/Mad_Martins.html

MAD MARTINS!

THE STORY OF THE INCREDIBLE MARTIN FAMILY OF TYNEDALE

IN SONG, POETRY & NARRATIVE

MEET THE NOTORIOUS INCENDIARY JONATHAN

PHILOSOPHICAL CONQUEROR WILLIAM

& FAMED PAINTER

JOHN

WITH POET KEITH ARMSTRONG & GARY MILLER OF ‘THE WHISKY PRIESTS’ FOLK ROCK BAND

featuring new songs & poems

Double album & touring show coming your way soon!

BOOK NOW: NORTHERN VOICES COMMUNITY PROJECTS TEL 0191 2529531

POETRY & PIPES

I have worked with local poet, Keith Armstrong, off-and-on for a number of years, playing at poetry festivals, for visitors from foreign parts, at launches of Keith’s publications, and on occasions where he had been asked to read his poetry. Early on we experimented with combining pipes with Keith’s poetry; one project was to find tunes for Keith’s poems about Jamie Allen. I also realised that Keith’s “Song for Northumberland” could be sung to the official Northumberland County tune, “Northumberland Air”. The Jamie Allen poems were originally written for a touring show, O’er the Hills, by Northumberland Touring Company. Original music was written by Rick Taylor and played by Kathryn Tickell. Keith and I performed the poems at The Maltings in Berwick and recorded them for his CD, Out to Sea. Poetry and Music from Northumbria, produced by Northern Voices. More recently I have provided musical interludes during poetry events rather than play along with the poems.

These events have mostly taken place in and around Newcastle – The Red House on Newcastle Quayside, St James’ Park, The Lit and Phil, The Centurion Bar at Central Station, St Mary’s Lighthouse in Whitley Bay, The Grand Hotel in Tynemouth, The Oak in Edinburgh, and the University of Durham, among others. Twice I have been abroad with Keith. At the end of April 2012 Keith and I travelled to Ireland to help launch the Fermoy International Poetry Competition. We were made very welcome in Fermoy at Murphy’s, otherwise known as the Elbow Lane Inn, and Keith made the short list. I was unable to accept an invitation to return for the finals of the competition at the beginning of August. I have also not been in a position to accept invitations to Prague.

An invitation that I did accept was to the Netherlands in December 1998. We flew from Newcastle to Amsterdam and then caught a train to Groningen, which is twinned with Newcastle upon Tyne. There we took part in Nachtspraak at Muziekcafé Koekkoek. The following day we visited two schools and then headed for Den Helder and De Blicksem pub. The other performances were at Studentencafé Nobel in Delft and de Koos in The Hague, in which the décor included stuffed swans. Accommodation was in homes of the organisers and of a fellow poet, who had the most interesting home. He lived in an official squat in a former government building in The Hague. He was in Newcastle reading his poems, and I was provided with a mattress in his office – Keith stayed on a houseboat in Amsterdam and travelled down for the gig. It was a very interesting experience, and I certainly saw places that I wouldn’t have visited as a tourist.

I like to play my pipes for different audiences and also enjoy listening to poetry, so I hope to continue participating in Keith’s events and taking Northumbrian small pipes to new audiences.

Ann Sessoms

(Northumbrian Pipers' Society Newsletter 2012)

MARSDEN ROCK

Sensational Rock,
swimming in light.
Bird cries clinging to ancient ledges,
Kittiwakes smashing against time.
What tales you could tell.

Your face is so moody,
flickers with breezes,
crumbles in a hot afternoon.

Climbing your powdery steps,
we look down on the sea
thrashing at you.

We join a choir of birds at your peak,
cry out to the sky
in good spirits.

Nesting for the sake of it,
our lyrics are remnants on the shore.

We keep chipping away,
do we not?

We slip
through the pebbles,
splashing
with babies.

We leave our mark,
a grain
on the ancient landscape.

We go.

We dance like the sunlight
on your scarred body:

tripping,
falling,
singing

away.




KEITH ARMSTRONG

KATRINA PORTEOUS: NEW CD

KATRINA PORTEOUS


Events Diary

2013

April

Demo CD of

The Melly-Belly Songs / Five Sea Songs
by Jakub Zahradnik

to poems by Katrina Porteous and Keith Armstrong. 
Produced by Pagat Ultimo Musical Productions, s.r.o in Prague.



A few years ago, Dr Keith Armstrong, a well-known poet from Newcastle, travelled through Europe and met Czech composer and poet Jakub Zahradnik in Prague. Keith introduced Katrina to Jakub, and they performed together at Poetic Cafe Obratnik, where Jakub worked as a programme manager. The encounter resulted in a friendship, further reciprocal visits, and joint performances in Prague and Newcastle. 
Jakub was inspired to make a setting of Katrina's 'Five Sea Songs' written in the Northumbrian Dialect – five duets dealing with the lives of men and women, connected by the sea and the uneasy lot of fishermen. He has also worked with Keith Armstrong's poems to create 'The Melly-Belly Songs', characterized by the typical span of Keith's style – tender lyricism and nostalgia, blended with blistering humour and provocative satire. 

For more information about Jakub Zahradnik and his music, please see:
www.jakubzahradnik.com
 For copies of the demo CD please contact:
  info@katrinaporteous.co.uk

IN THE GALWAY HOOKER BAR

(Heuston Rail Station, Dublin)

I’m back in the Galway Hooker,

heading out to the west

and, as usual, it’s teeming

with the scheming 

pond life of Dublin:

the newts

and wits

who twinkle 

in this bowl 

of moving humanity,

at swim

in sunlight,

slumped

in a beaten economics

and those boom days 

that are past.

And Jimmy Joyce and his literary travellers

leer at us from a corner 

of streaming consciousness

and bad girls’ skirts

drift upwards

in an afternoon 

with miles ahead

and the promise

of a kiss 

of Irish Coffee.

I’m crawling

today along

this beaten track to Limerick,

the chance occurence

of a poetry event,

the opportunity for fickle friends

to catch my dreams

in inquisitive ears

and despatch 

my skimming words

to the gutters of shot memories.

‘By God she’s a looker,

that one on the stool,

making an awful fool

of  a lad in the Hooker.’

‘Her legs go the whole way,

her terrible sin,

she sings

from here to Galway.’

And then The Boys from Tipperary 

they’re here

in a clump of blazers and ties

and every one has a lass

on his hurling arm

and a pint of Guinness in his face.

We envy them

their youth and not their sense,

we wise old men of Heuston

who’ve seen the heroes come and go,

heard the guns ring out

across the Station

and learnt 

to savour

the slaughter

in our glasses.

But now friends 

we must be 

heading off 

to the dawn

and hope 

that these trains 

we leave behind

can find their way

to that which our history 

sheds.

So remember

Sean Heuston,

the railway clerk,

a crucifix he kissed

and the freedom he died for,

every drink

that you down 

in the Hooker. 

KEITH ARMSTRONG

The Galway Hooker is a traditional fishing boat used in Galway Bay off the west coast of Ireland. The hooker was developed for the strong seas there. Its sail plan consists of a single mast with a main sail and two foresails. Traditionally, the boat is black (being coated in pitch) and the sails are a dark red-brown.

THE JINGLING GEORDIE

Watch me go leaping in my youth

down Dog Leap Stairs

down firescapes.

The Jingling Geordie

born in a brewery,

drinking the money

I dug out of the ground.

Cloth cap in hand I go

marching in the jangling morning

to London gates.

Jingling Geordie

living in a hop haze,

cadging from the Coppers

I went to the school with.

Older I get in my cage,

singling out a girl half my years

to hitch with.

Oh yes! I’m the Jingling Geordie,

the one who pisses on himself,

wrenching out the telephone

his father left off the hook.

Listen to my canny old folk songs;

they lilt and tilt into the dank alley,

into the howls of strays.

Oops! the Jingling Geordie

goes out on his town,

rocking and rolling a night away,

stacking it with the weary rest.

See my ghost in the discotheque,

in the dusty lights,

in the baccy rows.

Jingling Geordie,

dancing gambler,

betting he’ll slip

back to the year when the Lads won the Cup.

Well I walk my kids to the Better Life,

reckoning up the rude words dripping

like gravy off me granda’s chin.

Whee! goes the Jingling Geordie;

figment of the gutter brain,

fool of the stumbling system,

emptying my veins into a rich men’s palace.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

MARTIN, MY SON

Martin, my son,

stop drinking.

Your wife is drifting away.

You frighten her.

She swims in tears in the kitchen,

hoovers the darkness.

When she left you for the first time,

you slashed your manly wrists,

trying to grab her back

from all those deserted streets.

Bandaged now, you’re on the pool table again,

gambling your love for another pint.

Martin, my son,

you’re a helpless fool;

a boy apeing a man,

a man apeing a boy.

You have your jobs to do,

she has hers.

And so the barriers grow between the sheets.

Martin, I pity you.

You were just brought up that way;

without much chance,

dreamless and without love.

You took your tattoos down the pit.

On your first day at work you were sick,

cried on your mother’s pinny,

soaking her with fear and affection.

Martin, my darling boy,

you grew from an angel into a brute.

Your eyes narrowed into hate

when you beat your first woman

and fell asleep on her.

Give it up, Martin,

show the world that you care.

You’re young enough yet.

Because you failed to kill yourself,

you’re lucky.

You’ve got a life to live.

Give that life ot her.

Martin, you’re supposed to be a man,

but you could still

be beautiful.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

(From 'Dreaming North', 1986 - written in Peterlee, County Durham)