holyrood

RAINBOW, FREUDENSTADT

A rainbow

curved above us all.

It stretched

from the North Sea to the Black Forest.

It arced over ancient walls

and, beneath its spectrum,

birds mocked aeroplanes

and pecked

at a mad Professor’s brains.

KEITH  ARMSTRONG

TIDELINE

We are breathers of water

take sea air

We waltz in breezes

dream of waves

We break voices on shores

sink in the deep

We swim with sea horses

drink the ocean

We are poets of surf

skim on tides

We are dancers in sand 

dip toes in sun

We soak poems in North Sea

rock with the roll of it

We are fishes flying

scream with seagulls

We walk on coral streets

awash with words

We are sharks at the seaside

laugh with dolphins

We hear echoes of foghorns

lonely in dunes

We are singers of shanties

roar with ships                                

KEITH ARMSTRONG

THE LUEBECK POEM

THE LUEBECK POEM*

In Luebeck,

feeling like a shipwreck,

I saw the ghost of Thomas Mann

stuffing his face with Marzipan.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

* Luebeck - North German Hanseatic city, famous for the manufacture of Marzipan and as the birthplace of the novelist Thomas Mann.

ROOKS AT BUNRATTY CASTLE

We’re Macnamara’s crows,

rooting for sticks and twigs in Limerick days.

We peck the flesh from Lord Gort’s arse,

from the hangers-on to his rich pickings.

We sweep our turbulent wings across the Shannon,

swimming in the Atlantic winds,

flailing over the airport.

We’re building our own

branches of castles,

screaming rebel rants at you below.

Us rooks

have seen the Vikings and the Stoddarts

rave and die.

We are a black brood

swarming though history,

watching you feckless humans

scrap over misery.

See how our wings beat

with the moment’s surf.

How dark our hearts grow 

with suffering.

Keith Armstrong

SONGBIRD

If I had been a really professional poet,

I would be still rewriting this,

poring over the umpteenth draft,

burning the midnight quill.

As it is, all I want to say again is this:

that a songbird does not need an Arts Council grant

to sing.

Keith Armstrong

I WANT MY POEMS IN A BIG PRESS

So you’re in print with a small press

a little press for a short arse

Well I want my poems in a big press

a large press with big breasts

with poems that talk to the world

with spirit in every word

KEITH ARMSTRONG 

RICHARD STRAUSS

The sky surrounds me.

Why have I walked so tall?

I rest my weary head

on this cold mountain,

milky pastures

wrapped around the hills

like scarves.

Snow falls in my hair,

melts into dandruff.

I am combing this mountainside for you

Richard Strauss

of the long locks,

whose private house dreams down below,

beneath the looming avalanche of Alps.

I have flown this far to touch you,

to scrape a hill with a fingernail,

to walk barefoot on Bavaria.

The military bands still bury the dead.

A raucous bell around your neck,

The music is not pretty.

It howls from the Russian front

and splinters the bones of a Garmisch churchyard.

And now, through the eyes of the Zugspitze, I watch

fresh battles conducted on your beloved soil,

GIs skiing patterns of another war.

In this time, I lie naked all night,

all ears to your drifting music

as it whistles across the valley,

telling the grumbling peasants that

you too were really a lonely man

who kissed the snow,

and Adolf’s freezing hand.

Keith Armstrong

MEN OF THE NORTH

Doctor Keith Armstrong presents:

‘Men of the North’ (part of Local History Month)

From poet John Cunningham to wood engraver Thomas Bewick, political agitator and poet Tom Spence, painter John Martin to writer Jack Common - their stories told by Dr Keith Armstrong aka The Jingling Geordie who also performs his own poems dedicated to this splendid array of local talent.

Thursday 17th May 2011  6.30-7.30pm 

Bewick Hall, Newcastle City Library

Admission free

Further information: tel 0191 2774149

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

ALNWICKDOTE

(for Jenny)

These rough stones,

carried for miles to build

such a Castle,

mounted on fields

of bittersweet slopes.

Stoned lions,

countrified gargoyles

hunch, unpouncing;

their stiff glares fixed

on us fee-paying visitors,

taking a stroll through

the dusty chapters,

the library dungeons.

And I would suppose

this afternoon to be,

for us, some piece of history,

both strolling through

crisis after crisis,

hearts beating heart beats

and blood warm, flowing

through us as we walk between

such cold walls,

older than a Duke,

but never as wise as this love of mine

nor as fragile as

that historic moment inside the Castle

when once you smiled at me

so wonderfully.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

Alnwick Castle, Northumberland

IN THE FIRE STATION

The screen

in the corner

flashes celebrity images

above the hunched heads

of craggy regulars.

Subtitles punctuate

the horror of Iraq,

shallowness of Beckham’s mouth

gabbing

like a demented fish

over supping plebs.

Their talk is of aches and pains

and scraping through,

their question time has no answers,

only weary

resignations.

The TV mocks

the ordinary

struggles

to bring up soft babies

with tough futures.

The thing

is forced upon us,

dumped upon us,

scoffing

at the weak

on cheap beer.

It says:

GEORGE OSBORNE IS IN BRUSSELS.

Well, we are drinking in Whitley Bay

and HE,

he can piss off.

In the Fire Station,

we have thirsts to slake,

bets to be placed

on whether we’ll make it

through to another tomorrow

just the same

and just as unjust.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

GARCIA LORCA IN WHITLEY BAY

‘I’ve come to devour your mouth

and dry you off by the hair

into the seashells of daybreak.’

(Federico Garcia Lorca)

In the rotunda,

your voice lashes out at war.

You 

sing 

on the crests of the girls,

streaming up the Esplanade.

You

scream under a parasol of gulls,

skimming through the fairground,

on a mission to strangle

flying fish.

Haunting poetry 

in the dead ghost train,

the palms of the fortune-tellers, 

dust.

Lorca in a broken-down ghost town,

scattering your petals:

Garcia up against the wall

of last night,

eyes shot;

blood from the evening sky,

dripping down an ice cream cone,

down a sweet lass’s blouse.

Saw you on the Metro, Federico,

saw you in Woolworth’s.

Saw you in the crematorium,

on Feather’s caravan site.

Saw you drown

in a sea of lyrical beauty.

Lorca,

like Community,

you are gone;

ideals

torn into coastal shreds.

Still shells 

glisten,

lips on the beach

ready

for kissing again

ready

for the re-launch

of childish dreams,                                                                

sticky 

with candy floss                                                                                                                    

and cuckoo spit.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

                                                                                                  

The Spanish City, Whitley Bay.

                                                                                                                    

new from hill salad books

Keith Armstrong • Splinters

ISBN 978-0-9564827-9-2
148x210mm 96pp paperback 2011 £9.99

There are those who tell the terrible truth in all its loveliness. Keith Armstrong is one of them, a fine poet who refuses to turn his back on the wretched of the Earth. Adrian Mitchell

Keith is a noted Geordie wordsmith, a bloke whose musings were always radical, though of their place. Folk Roots Magazine

Splinters is a collection of fifty-three poems.

Born in Newcastle upon Tyne, where he has worked as a community development worker, poet, librarian and publisher, Keith Armstrong now resides in the seaside town of Whitley Bay. He is coordinator of the Northern Voices creative writing and community publishing project and has organised several community arts festivals in the region and many literary events. He was also founder ofOstrich poetry magazine, Poetry North East, Tyneside Poets and the Strong Words and Durham Voicescommunity publishing series.

He recently compiled and edited books on the Durham Miners’ Gala and on the former mining communities of County Durham, the market town of Hexham and the heritage of North Tyneside. He has been a self-employed writer since 1986 and he was awarded a doctorate in 2007 for his work on Newcastle writer Jack Common at the University of Durham where he received a BA Honours Degree in Sociology in 1995 and Masters Degree in 1998 for his studies on regional culture in the North East of England. His academic study of Jack Common was published by the University of Sunderland Press in 2009.

His poetry has been extensively published in magazines such as New Statesman, Poetry Review, Dream Catcher, and Other Poetry, as well as in the collections The Jingling Geordie, Dreaming North, Pains of Classand Imagined Corners, on cassette, LP & CD, and on radio & TV. He has performed his poetry on several occasions at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and at Festivals in Aberdeen, Bradford, Cardiff, Cheltenham (twice at the Festival of Literature – with Liz Lochhead and with ‘Sounds North’), Durham, Newcastle upon Tyne, Greenwich, Lancaster, and throughout the land.

In his youth, he travelled to Paris to seek out the grave of poet Charles Baudelaire and he has been making cultural pilgrimages abroad ever since. He has toured to Russia, Georgia, Bulgaria, Poland, Iceland (including readings during the Cod War), Denmark, France, Germany (including readings at the Universities of Hamburg, Kiel, Oldenburg, Trier and Tuebingen), Hungary, Italy, Ireland, Spain, Sweden, Czech Republic, The Netherlands, Cuba, Jamaica and Kenya.