STRASBOURG

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THE GOLDEN ROOM

‘Was it for nothing that the little room,

All golden in the lamplight, thrilled with golden

Laughter from hearts of friends that summer night?’ (Wilfrid Gibson)

I’m as happy as a daffodil

this day;

sunshine flows around me

over fences,

leaping

with the joy of my poetry.

I am Lord Pretty Field,

a tipsy aristocrat of verse,

become full of myself

and country booze

in the Beauchamp Arms.

Under branches frothy with blossom,

I carry a torch from Northumberland

for Wilfrid Gibson

and his old mates;

for Geraldine

I bear

my Cheviot heart

in Gloucester ciderlight.

We can only catch

a petal from the slaughter,

a bloom

to ease the melancholy

of a Dymock dusk;

hear laughter

over the gloomy murmurs

of distant wars.

A swirling rook cries out

across St Mary’s spire

in dialect

as I climb

back to my White House room

to dream of an England gone,

and a flash of whisky

with Abercrombie.

For Wilfrid you are still

‘a singing star’,

drenched in balladry;

and this I know:

I will keep your little songs alive

in this Golden Room in my heart

and, in my Hexham’s market place,

rant for you

and cover

all our love

with streaming daffodils.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

TUEBINGEN WEBCAM

DR KEITH ARMSTRONG:

POEMS ON TUEBINGEN, DURHAM'S TWIN CITY IN SOUTH GERMANY

WITH PHOTOGRAPHS BY PETER DIXON

AN EXHIBITION IN THE DURHAM ROOM, DURHAM COUNTY COUNCIL, COUNTY HALL, DURHAM

WEDNESDAY 9TH TO FRIDAY 18TH NOVEMBER 2011       9AM TO 5PM

Further information: tel 0191 2529531

beehive poets at new beehive inn

Please note: all poetry readings, read-rounds and workshops start at 8.30pm.

Monday 14/11/2011

Visiting readers Keith Armstrong and Nick Toczek

Born in Newcastle upon Tyne where he has worked as a community development worker, poet,librarian and publisher, Keith Armstrong, now residing in Whitley Bay, is coordinator of the Northern Voices creative writing and community publishing project which specialises in recording the experiences of people in the North East of England. He has organised several community arts festivals in the region and many literary events. He was founder

of Ostrich poetry magazine, Poetry North East,Tyneside Writers' Workshop, Tyneside Poets, East Durham Writers' Workshop, Tyneside Trade Unionists for Socialist Arts, Tyneside Street Press and the Strong Words and Durham Voices community publishing series. He has recently compiled and edited books on the Durham Miners’ Gala and on the former mining communities of County Durham and the market town of Hexham. 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 poetry has been extensively published in magazines such as New Statesman, Poetry Review, Dream Catcher, Other Poetry, Aesthetica, Iron, Salzburg Poetry Review, X Magazine, The Poetry Business, The Recusant and Poetry Scotland, as well as in the collections The Jingling Geordie, Dreaming North,Pains of Class and 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. His poetry has been translated into Dutch, German,

Russian, Italian, Icelandic and Czech. Supported by North Tyneside Council, Commissions North and Northumberland Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, he recently worked with Berlin artist Rolf Wojciechowski on a text sculpture which involved readings on the beaches along the

Northumbrian coast from Marsden to Cullercoats and from Druridge Bay to Berwick. In 2007 he collaborated on the touring play "The Making of Saint Cuthbert" for which he wrote and performed his poetry including shows in local churches. He appeared again at the Hexham Abbey Festival in 2008, at the Durham Book Festival and at the Cork International Jazz Festival Fringe. Though a regionalist inspired by the landscape of his birth and its folk and musical traditions, he is very much a European and his work is much influenced by writers such as Hoelderlin, Hesse, Brecht, Baudelaire, Prevert, Esenin, and Mayakovsky. Latest publications: "Splinters" (Hill Salad Books 2011) and "The Month of the Asparagus" (Ward wood Publishing 2011).

Nick Toczek has been a fulltime writer and performer since the early seventies. He's published more than forty books and has done tens of thousands of readings of his work. He currently tours globally visiting about ten countries a year, writes for R2 magazine, and does his own weekly show on BCB Radio. He's just finished This Book Needs To Be Red, a collection of children's poems to be published by Caboodle Books, Be Very Afraid! a collection of horror poems for older children and adults which will probably be published by Macmillan, and an autobiographical prose collection, My Life Sentences, which is with publishers at present. He's now completing two collections of travel poems entitled Flights and Further Flights. Also, Britanarchy, an EP of songs recorded with Bradford band Threshold Shift was released in September 2011.

trieste

Join Gary Miller, Tony Morris, David Biermann, Ann Sessoms, Robert Lonsdale and Keith Armstrong in the bar of the Dun Cow, Old Elvet, Durham on Monday 31st October from 7.30 for an evening of folk music and poetry with special guests Acoustic Pastimes from Durham's twin city of Tuebingen. 

GRONINGEN/NEWCASTLE LITERARY/ARTS TWINNING

The literary/arts twinning continues to progress with Groningen's new official City Poet Stefan Nieuwenhuis jetting in on September 6th 2011 to join Newcastle poet Keith Armstrong at a launch of Keith's new books in the presence of the Sheriff of Newcastle.

After which, Armstrong and folk musician Gary Miller appeared again in schools and cafes in Newcastle's twin city of Groningen at the end of September following on from successful appearances in 2010 where they presented their unique poems and songs in the International School, Haren Library (with a specially commissioned performance for Haren's 850th anniversary and a recital of the poems of Charles Dickens) and O'Ceallaigh's Irish Bar. During the September stay, Armstrong performed his sequence of Groningen poems, written after many visits to the city, with some settings by Miller.

A Groningen delegation made up of poets, publishers, journalists and cultural officers and headed by Councillor for Culture Jaap Dijkstra visited Newcastle in September 2008 and a special performance evening was held at the Ouseburn Boathouse with readings by the Groningen poets and their Newcastle counterparts incuding Keith Armstrong, Paul Summers and Ellen Phethean. 

Successful events were also held in Newcastle in October 2007 to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the literary twinning between the respective cities, including a poetry and music evening at the Bridge Hotel and a reception with the City's Lord Mayor.

The new Groningen City Poet Rense Sinkgraven took part, along with fellow Groningen poet Willem Groenewegen, and Nick J. Swarth (City Poet of Tilburg) added colour to the celebrations.

The poets were joined by twinning pioneers Professor Helen Wilcox and jazz performer Allan Wilcox (on double bass and piano) and Groningen Cultural Officer Marieke Zwaving.

Keith Armstrong led the team of Newcastle performers with fellow poets Paul Summers, Poetry Jack, Catherine Graham, Ian Horn and Mick Standen. 

Armstrong first visited Groningen in 1992 with poet Julia Darling to set the ball rolling. Since then there have been readings in pubs, universities, libraries, and schools and at breakfast parties, festivals, cabaret clubs and civic centres in both cities.

For the record, here's a list of those artists who have made it happen so far:

Groningen literary/cultural visitors to Newcastle since 1992:

Rense Sinkgraven, Marieke Zwaving, Jaap Dijkstra, Tine Bethlehem, Albertina Soepboer, Tsead Bruinja, The Poets from Epibreren (Bart FM Droog, Tjitse Hofmann, Paul Jainandun Singh, Jan Klug), Sieger M. Geertsma, Ronald Ohlsen, Anneke Claus, Willem Groenewegen, Anton Scheepstra, Eric Nederkoorn, Herman Sandman, Emiel Matulewicz, Jeroen Engels, Entre'acte jazz duo (Allan Wilcox, Sina Keuning), Janny Boerma, Helen Wilcox, Henk Muda, Klaas Drenth, Emmeke Schurink-Plas, Willem Smit.

Newcastle visitors to Groningen since 1992:

Keith Armstrong, Julia Darling, The Poetry Virgins, Paul Summers, Ian Horn, Tony Whittle (photographer/musician), Ann Sessoms (Northumbrian Piper), Chris Ormston (Northumbrian Piper), Chris Hartnett (singer/songwriter), John Earl, Alan Clark (Nod), Dave Gaston, Michael Standen, Marie Little (singer), Gary Miller (singer/songwriter).

FURTHER INFORMATION: NORTHERN VOICES, TEL. 0191 2529531.

RETURN TO CHERRYBURN -THE LIFE AND WORK OF THOMAS BEWICK (1753-1828) POEMS BY THE TYNESIDE POETS

FOR THOMAS BEWICK

In your precious art you are raised

delicate species fresh, alive

with every searching niche of blade, 

on metalled tints of bone

in flesh, conceived.

Today, our clear eye can review

that aggregate of animals

and spreading plants which grew;

now your thoughts to Cherryburn

are our adoption.

Through sludge of field flung back

from my drag of parting feet,

crossing matted rural lands

you swept in light and shade,

a lock of trees

inside a border to engrave.

Gordon Phillips   

CHERRYBURN

Time, eater of men and stones and landscapes, 

Scarcely turns in some places.  The wheel’s silence

Is held, palpable, among darkened hills.

Trees etched in black against held dusk:

No birds. No sounds; as once and now are one,

Identical, as here at Cherryburn.

We reach the house slated and washed by change.

The stench of dung and fodder under the oak beams

That rib the darkness, echo what we mean:

There is a point where time, itself extinguished,

Remembers, being darkened, what it is.

There is a point where man stops the Dark Wheel

Fixes, outside of time, a detail seem;

And this being done, years past, at Cherryburn

Figures a frail persistency in Man.

We question it, we call in question much 

Eaten by fire, unscorched; the hidden hand

That makes a wall of waters where we pass.

As men have always done, against a sky of brass,

We cry aloud, and doubt it even as we touch

Beyond the real, Impalpable Reality.

Time, eater of stones and men, and all built

Up, is broken on a silence here.  It rests.

Perhaps there are such places, given us

That we may see, over dark piled-up cloud

An earlier moment:  candlelight of dusk;

Man’s lucid mind under astonished glass.

Alan C. Brown

THE HARE

The hare cried

when I took it in my arms…

before the farmer

broke its leg

and flung it back

to face his dogs again…….

And so this hare’s

engraved in memory

preserved forever running

and forever running free.

Eleanor Makepeace 

THE ANGLER

Shielded from the world

In a shrine of foliage,

The angler knots his concentration.

Intruders sense their trespass,

Retreat unseen in silent awe.

While Nature breathes in sympathy

Entirely at one with this bowed figure

Whose inward, intent thoughts

Only a Son of hers

Could so skilfully display

In fulsome, rounded lines

That draw us in to his furrowed brow

And feel the pain of this intensity.

Helen M. Pickles

A STAG

Staring proudly back

with as fine an eye

As cast you there;

Caught, but not snared;

Imprisoned, but unbridled;

Your vibrancy channelled

In delicate lines,

A fleeting stance

So carelessly struck – 

As forgotten by you

As the morning’s scent – 

Now timelessly etched;

A life preserved 

Though long since lost.

Helen M. Pickles

BIRDS

The random rush of nature posed

for your delicate instruments to compose

symphonies of rooks and owls and blackbirds;

a choral work as soft as still words

over which the Mute Swan glides,

floating into place, ruffled only by 

the last deft cut that froze – 

sharp image of an eagle’s savage claws.

Subtle hands plucked a feather

and drew its weight

exactly across a plate,

impressing down upon a page forever:

Thomas Bewick, crakes or crowns,

complex nature, simply posed.

Dave Alton

WAITING FOR DEATH

(Thomas Bewick’s last work)

This last   almost immortal now

his weak eyes   plucked from time

four iron hooves   almost afloat

the ribs’   thin cry   what else?

A boxwood landscape   cut with rain

Steeple and farm stones   the blemished oak

- traces and leather trappings peel the skin

- only a horse?   What is, what might have been?

With brown silk cap and scalded skull he leans

over a world turned out become the pain

each of us feels under dark threat, or worse.

Lastly   a grim unyielding poise   breaks through

His knife opens a mystery   and stilled

the balance of his mind   takes all men in.

Alan C. Brown

FIVE POEMS by Keith Armstrong             

AMEN CORNER

(in memory of Thomas Bewick, wood engraver)

The starlings en masse

roost here now.

They blend with the dark trees

in the twilight

by Bewick's shadowy workshop.

Under the Cathedral spire,

they shriek and gossip

in the chill;

chit-chat of more weather.

I think that Thomas

you could speak to birds,

knew them as you drew their words

in woodblocks.

You coaxed them from their very eggs,

uncaged them -

let them sing on the page.

THE BROTHERLY SOCIETY

London

Depressed you

with its ‘blackguard places’,

its streetwalking ways.

They called you ‘Scotchman’

and you itched for home,

reading the Geordie papers

at the Hole-in-the-Wall. 

And your heart trilled like a blackbird’s

when you rejoined your Whig mates,

putting a world to rights

in the Lion Lounge.

You were back

herding sheep in your roots,

smiling down to your boots

in that Brotherly Society

of Northumbrian cronies:

the wild fields

of Tyne.

RETURN TO CHERRYBURN

Drawing

clear of the city,

you carved your name  

in dogs barks

and birds cries.  

Your infant eyes

kept seeing

the devils in bushes

and the gods

in thrushes.

You loved

to scratch a living.

Avoiding the faces

of strange places,

You dreamed of always

Being a boy,

A bird or a fish,

Awash in the light

Of a dark wood:

A cherry burn.

Footprints home

To remember.  

‘TALE PIECES’

You spent your life

perfecting it,

crafty as a fox

forging a frantic path

across the fields.

To the sound of the Pipes,

you worked your way

to a quiet glade,

died contentedly

devising

‘tale-pieces’:

a tuneful ending

to a drawn-in-day.

       

WALK ON, TOM BEWICK     

Stride Circus Lane

and chip your signature

on the pavement of scrapes and kisses.

pass the Forth

and skirt

its pleasure gardens;

throw your darts in the archery field.

skim the bowling green

and walk on water,

doff your hat to Mrs Waldie;

cut along

old scars of lanes

to the bloody gush of Westgate street;

whistle with birds

in a vicar’s garden,

let warm thoughts fly in Tyneside sun

to bless this Geordie day.

And greet

the morning hours,

Aunt Blackett and Gilbert Gray,

sing to free the world,

the Black Boy;

harmonise your mind

in a churchyard of melancholy.

Dance over the Lort Burn,

in the sun in your eyes,

flooding your workshop

with a light fantastic.

Your shoulders so proud

rub with the building girls

and lady barbers

along Sandhill;

the boats of your dreams

bridge the aching Tyne,

ships groaning

in the tender daylight,

longing for the healing moon;

a keelman’s fantasies

of quayside flesh

and the seething sea.

You trip along

searching for electricity and magnetism

in the inns,

winging it

with the bird catchers and canary breeders,

the dirty colliers and the harping whalers.

Walk on Tom,

execute

a portrait

of a hanging man;

let your strong heart

swell with the complex passion

of common folk.