THE MONTH OF THE ASPARAGUS

It was the month of the asparagus

and you kissed me by the river

with the rain flowing down your face.

It was the day you burst

like a volcano,

gushing all over me

as we ran

down Neckargasse,

exulting

in the sky weeping all over us

and in the laughter of children

splashing in the damp raging day.

It was the month of the asparagus

when our dreams landed

through the attic window of Lange Gasse 18.

It was the day my heart rang

with all the bells of Tuebingen

and my bones ached

with the weight of memory,

the sad loss,

hanging over us

a mountainous cloud of longing,

full with the tangy moisture

of new songs and poems.

It was the month of the asparagus

when I zoomed in to meet you

with my arms open to the grand afternoon.

O what a day

when I came again to see you

with my heart heavy,

riddled with the seeds

of creative delight and the light

of a stream of wondrous moments

pouring,

the length of Wilhelmstrasse,

into the very realms of hope.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

I DON’T MIX WITH POETS

I don’t mix with poets,

They’re so boring.

I don’t mix with poets,

They’re too self-adoring.

I mix with drunk Magpies,

I mix with no lies,

I mix with a bit on The Side.

I don’t mix with poets,

They’re parasitic.

I don’t mix with poets,

They’re soporific.

I mix with nice girls,

I mix with dumb animals,

I mix with wild birds on The Wall.

I don’t mix with poets,

They’re stand-offish.

I don’t mix with poets,

They’re too foppish.

I mix with my fantasies,

I mix with realities,

I mix with the maids of the seas.

I don’t mix with poets,

They’re just sycophants.

I don’t mix with poets,

They get Arts Council grants!

Keith Armstrong

Commissioned by BBC Radio Newcastle for National Poetry Day

'I don't mix with other poets very much. I have a couple of 'poet' friends I trust but, to be honest, I don't get involved in the scene. On the whole, I think it's much healthier as it can be very incestuous and damaging for you as an individual and as a writer, especially if you're sensitive, so for me it's best avoided. It's hard to explain what the scene is like but it can be vicious. The writing is all that matters surely?' (Jane Weir)

THE JINGLING GEORDIE: AN INTRODUCTION

Watch me go leaping in my youth
down Dog Leap Stairs,
down fire-scapes.
The Jingling Geordie,
born in a brewery,
drinking the money
I dug out of the ground.

The collected poetry of Keith Armstrong (‘The Jingling Geordie’) is, in my opinion, as iconic as Lindisfarne's ‘Fog on the Tyne’.

I kicked out in Half Moon Yard,
bucked a rotten system.
Fell out with fools in All Hallows Lane
and grew up feeling loved.

By far, I would maintain, the best poet from the North East of England over the last forty years, his evocative poetry reverberates with life, rooted in Newcastle’s rich working class history, its architecture and cloth capped streets; its atmosphere, highs and lows, its heroes and reformers, minstrels and poets.

Armstrong on Newcastle writer Jack Common:

He bowled along the corridors through Milburn House
and stalked the nightmare of his past;
all around him fell bulldozed history
and his suit shook with soot.
He sensed a shallowness in the air,
a city with its guts ripped out.
He blinked at the scale of the new Law Courts
and thought of battles the workers lost.

Part of the strength of Armstrong's work is his ability to weave multiple threads into his poems seamlessly, blending a sense of history with full-on contemporary themes (and sometimes the old themes are also contemporary!). He'll wrap sensuous rock and roll and earthy colloquialisms around startlingly evocative, yet realist, images, alongside a full-tilt narrative.

His honesty is almost confessional at times; his empathy with the downtrodden and oppressed stems from experience and observation. His odes target the hypocritical, the insincere and the exploiters, putting them squarely in their place and yet there's also humour and irony and downright irreverency.

There's love and lust in there too and vulnerability. All the various shades of his humanity animate his poems.
His poems are often word-videos that leave you with that feeling of having just emerged from a cinema and they capture the sense and heart of the city and its people like no other poetry that I've read.

I am the talk of the Tyne,
one of the many mouths
of this swilling river
in our blood.

Like other iconic poets and artists in Europe, Armstrong lives the life of the outsider, poet and raconteur. You can feel the alchemy that transforms his observations and experience and his pub crawl conversations with strangers into poetry with a full head of brilliance on it.

The breath of Europe
is recorded in the Bodensee's sighing:
the wars and agonised cries,
the shrieks of pleasure-boats,
the dying of pointless ideals.
Her castles and churches bear testimony
to all the joy and futility,
the spasms of birth.

Armstrong is an energetic grass roots networker, twinning writers and their groups from Groningen and Tuebingen, Edinburgh and Limerick and organising a yearly round of exchange visits, joint readings and performances.

O Limerick Days you are haunting my soul,
my songs cry out for your old Summer Street.
Make love when I pour you a glass of my verse,
with hope may it set your ancient soul free.

Along the way, there will be joint cross-cultural anthologies. Ontour, he'll hang out with European poets in historic bars, sharing his soul and teasing out what makes them tick until well past midnight, transmuting it all into poems as stunning as his Tyneside odes.

Yes, Tuebingen,
it's me
looking for myself once more
in your troubled mirrror.
So I dive
into La Boheme
and back and back and back
into the Boulanger.
So I stagger
out of Hades
and into the arms
of the Neckarmueller
to feed the ducks
with scraps of my trembling poetry.

No middle class poetry poseur, Keith is out there with pig farmers, building workers, football fanatics, barmaids, divorcees and anyone who will talk to him about politics, poetry, religion and life. He'll probably give them a book or CD of his and not trouble them for the price. He's made a lifestyle out of poetry and, although an Arts Council grant and a paid gig help, it's not all about money or the fame - it's just what he is - it's important to him to give of his light through his words and images and that people read, listen to and enjoy his poems.

He cares not a jot for their fancy Awards,
their sycophantic perambulations,
degrees of literary incest.
These trophies for nepotism
pass this peculiar bird by
as he soars
high
above the paper quadrangle,
circling over the dying Heads of Culture,
singing sweet revolutionary songs.

None the less, now over 60, isn't it time someone made a documentary about this iconic Geordie poet whose poems form a soundtrack for cities all over Europe? If you look deeply enough into the fog on the Tyne, you'll see the poems of Keith Armstrong emblazoned on every street and alley, a theatre of myth, legend and history that characterises his home city.

sing of the fish in the tyne
sing of the lost yards and the pits.

His poems are also dangerous - you might just end up questioning your beliefs. That's what poets are for - to
challenge us.

Get the UK out of your system,
no going back.
We take the power
to rule ourselves,
make community,
build our own spaces.
Break
the hegemony
of dead parties,
lifeless institutions,
let debate flower,
conflicting views rage.

Read and enjoy these specially selected poems and images from Tyneside and across Europe and experience the real magic of Armstrong’s words.



Trevor Teasdel - poet, songwriter, tutor and editor.

the common touch

Dear Dr Armstrong,

I thoroughly enjoyed 'Common Words and the Wandering Star' and learned much

from it. There were so many things I didn't know (well, most things

actually), for example Common's acquaintance with Dylan Thomas, and his

association with people like Empson, or that Orwell's wife is buried in

Jesmond Cemetery. I loved the chapter on the Hertfordshire period with

Orwell in particular, and am very sympathetic with Common's love of Romantic

poetry. I've taken the liberty this afternoon of posting you a copy of my

book on the Romantics which came out a few months ago. It's part of a new

series aimed at undergraduates. If you do get round to reading it and think

it's any good, please do recommend it here and there. I'd be grateful.

There's a sentence on p.52 of 'Common Words' which made me smile. 'The

"global market" seems triumphant'.

Anyway, wonderful to read such a long overdue book and you are to be

congratulated for it. My mother and father had their wedding reception in

'The Chillingham' in 1937.

All best wishes,

John Gilroy

LEAVING FRIENDS/FRIENDS LEAVING

(in memory of Mick Standen)

I have lost my roaring boys and girls.

They are left behind,

fallen from Collegium stools;

the poignant moments in Lange Gasse dust.

Times and laughter shared,

dwindled to an Ammer trickle

in a bleak semester,

worn out days.

Friends are for leaving.

I’m afraid

I am too old to chase it.

These young Swabian mistresses

are too damned quick

for me to grab anymore

their lightning glances,

hints of a possible romance

boarding trains,

flickering

in frigid seminar rooms.

Tear yourself from me

as I stumble

through security.

I know I’ll miss

your touch.

Horst has gone from Hades bar,

Paddy from the Boulanger,

Gerd has flown

to China.

Now Mick has slipped away

and all those twinning hours.

Nothing is still.

Her eyelashes flicker,

new wounds open;

the light streams on Wilhelmstrasse,

darkness fills Hafengasse.

A special sunlight

sparkles in my beer,

shafts of it

dart on the counter.

A bird flaps

across my face,

shadow

of a former glory.

So that’s the story:

we lose it all,

we lose everything

and everyone.

It’s why I cling

to the night wind

beating against my cheeks,

to the whisper of the leaves

along this dull suburban street.

The old voices

of mates I made

howling

through the mediocrity

of lonely petrol stations,

soul-destroying car parks.

Puddles

of former joy

winking at the moon.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

FOR PAUL

I saw you

creeping

round Baudelaire’s grave.

You were on a pilgrimage from Blyth.

I saw your face in Montparnasse,

blending with a swarm of irises.

You needed to get away from the grime,

to bathe in flowers of evil,

to wash your pale white body

in the Paris crowds,

broaden your worried brow.

Your young poems already rot

in the cemetery of poets

and yet you still churn out the stuff

as if your little voice meant something.

There is no going back

to that fateful day

when our eyes met by chance,

neighbours brought together by France

and the great mind of Charles.

He lay there,

pecked at by the grip of time,

in agony,

drugged by a quickfire nib,

injected with the poison of love

and the wit of drunkenness;

and I saw you,

before I even met you,

and I knew that one day we would fly

to a liberated Prague together,

to taste the freedom of the streets

and the lightning lash of fate.

Keith Armstrong

The demonisation of the white working class

Posted by Lisa Ansell - 06 February 2011 10:52

"Chav bashing" has become an acceptable replacement for overt racism and fuelled the rise of the EDL.

This weekend has seen David Cameron play on racial tensions, declaring multiculturalism to be over. The latest EDL demonstration became a catalyst for discussion about how to prevent the far right from exploiting the upcoming economic instability. Those gearing for the fight against the cuts are agonising over how 'their' movement can generate wider appeal, while the Labour party continue to hand-wring about how to recapture support from 'working class' voters. In all these discussions, there is one word that is notable by it's absence, a word that has permeated our culture, and become the insult that no-one wants applied to them.

Chav. A hogarthian caricature with easily identifiable dress and language epitomising everything that is wrong with 'broken Britain'.

The ultimate insult in a society where inequality can now only be articulated with language and values a university education produces. Both 'left' and 'right' quantifying success in terms of how far you have moved away from the community into which you were born, and how effectively you have blended traces of 'chav' into middle class understated blandness. 'Chavviness' clear evidence of a lack of aspiration.

If you come from a community that could be described as 'working class', the behaviour you exhibit, your clothing and speech, or the name of your child, if at all 'chavvy' can be used to marginalise you. Homophobia and overt racism no longer acceptable, 'chav' bashing, and fear of Islam and immigration are their acceptable replacements at the dinner table.

Northern towns once at the heart of our economy, had the industry that sustained them ripped away under Thatcher. The credit based economy that successive governments have favoured since, didn't really benefit them. We've had the same economic policies for 30 years, with Labour offering public sector jobs, and state support to hide low wages and increasingly scarce low paid, flexible, insecure employment..

There are districts of Rochdale where 84% percent of people need benefits. Radcliffe, proud home of paper manufacturing till the early eighties, now has a town centre which their Wikipedia page describes as barely viable. In Todmorden, the last 15 years have seen the remaining industrial employers disappear one by one, as the last time served engineers reach their forties. Local market traders, with the visible examples of Rochdale and Burnley nearby, fear their town is dying because the largest local employer is now the high school. The view of new businesses started in each wave of immigration, distorted by the wilful scaremongering about Islam and immigration by our politicians and media.

It is towns like these where groups like the EDL will capitalise on genuine feelings of alienation. It is in these towns that the fight against the cuts will be most important, and it is towns like these where Labour will hand-wring about how to recapture the 'working class vote'. If any of these problems are to be addressed, we are going to have to discuss how our economic policies have done so much damage, and why we have allowed the white working class to be abandoned and demonised so effectively.

hello again!

Hello Keith, Always good to hear from you, I hope you are okay and, wherever you are, filling that place with your poetry. I was just reminiscing with Cynthia about Burns Night:

"Twas, a week ago tonight Rabby set the Red House alight." We really enjoyed it Keith, hope we can do it again sometime. In the meantime, keep in touch and take care. Regards Robert. (Shy bairns get nee broth.... shy bairns get nee broth). ( I'm sorry about that...I'm sorry about that !!).