JINGLE ON MY SON!

JINGLE ON MY SON!
A doughty champion of his local culture.(Poet Tom Hubbard)Your performance at the city hall was soooooooooo good! Christoph thought it was excellent! (Carolyn)

28.10.12

DAYS LIKE THESE



DAYS LIKE THESE

I’ve waited weeks for this day
and I’m dancing on the asphalt with joy
as if it were a rhythm, as if it were a song
that keeps luring me through the streets

on my way to you, to pick you up,
as we had agreed:
at the same time, the same place as last time.

Through the elbowing of the bustling crowd
we’re paving the old familiar way
along the streets to the terraces on the Rhine,
over the bridges, right up to the music
where everything is loud, where everyone is there
to let loose
where the others are waiting to start with us
and get down.

On days like these, you wish it would never end.
On days like these,
we still have all the time in the world.
I wish it would never end.

This is unending, it’s unending for today
We won’t stand idle for an entire night
Come, I’ll carry you through the crowds,
don’t be afraid, I’ll take care of you
We’ll let ourselves drift, then dive under,
and go with the flow.
We’re going in circles,
we won’t come back down, we’re weightless.

On days like these, you wish it would never end.
On days like these,
we still have all the time in the world.
On this night of nights, which promises us so much
we’re experiencing the best, there’s no end in sight.

No end in sight
No end in sight
No end in sight

On days like these, you wish it would never end.
On days like these,
we still have all the time in the world.
On this night of nights, which promises us so much
we’re experiencing the best, no end is in sight.
We’re experiencing the best,
and there’s no end in sight,
no end in sight.

Lyric from German band Die Toten Hosen - track: Tage Wie Diese

20.10.12

KICKING OFF WITH A BANG!



KICKING OFF WITH A BANG!

A MANIFESTO FOR NORTHUMBRIA - 

OFFICIAL LAUNCH AT THE OLD GEORGE, CLOTH MARKET, NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE. ADMISSION  FREE. MONDAY 5TH NOVEMBER 7.30PM.

READINGS FROM THE NEW MANIFESTO BY DR KEITH ARMSTRONG & BRIAN HALL.

WITH NORTH EAST CULTURAL POETRY BY DR ARMSTRONG.

ANN SESSOMS ON NORTHUMBRIAN PIPES AND FOLK SONGS BY 'KIDDAR'S LUCK'.

TEL. NORTHERN VOICES COMMUNITY PROJECTS 0191 2529531 FOR FURTHER INFORMATION.





BONFIRES


Something is burning inside me;
you could call it my heart
but it's much more precise than that, it's a bonfire;
crackling sticks of shy words.


Crossing the country last week,
I saw them,
jumbled up heaps of poems
assembling,
rioting bundles of wood,
alone in October-dry fields.


Tonight, sitting here,
with only you in my eyes,
dazed by the intense glare, I devise
a scheme to link bonfires across the land,
to burn down the walls between our hands,


if only to set your face alight,
if only to see one Guy Fawkes Day
your dreamy children smile.




KEITH ARMSTRONG




TELL ME LIES ABOUT NORTHUMBERLAND
(in honour of Adrian Mitchell)

Say this land is ours, 
these pipe-tunes do not cry. 
The birds all sing in dialect,
old miners breathe like dukes.

Tell me lies about Northumberland.

Tell me it isn’t feudal,
that castles were built for us.
We never touch the forelock,
bend to scrape up dust.

Tell me lies about Northumberland.

Your pretty girls don’t stink of slaughter,
your eyes don’t blur with myth.
You’re as equal as a duchess,
saints never smell of piss.

Tell me lies about Northumberland.

Your roots are in this valley,
you were never from doon south.
You never hide your birthplace,
you’re a real poet of the north.

Tell me lies about Northumberland.

The churches are not crumbling,
the congregations glow with hope.
We are different from the foreigner,
our poetry rhymes with wine. 

Tell me lies about Northumberland. 

There is no landed gentry,
no homes locals can’t afford.
There’s no army on the moors,
the Romans freed us all.

Tell me lies about Northumberland.

That the hurt is in the past,
the future holds no war.
Home rule is at our fingertips,
the Coquet swims with love.

Tell me lies about Northumberland.  

‘The Garden’ is our children’s,
Hotspur spurs us on.
The seagulls are not soaked in oil,
the cows are not diseased.

Tell me lies about Northumberland.

This Kingdom is United,
‘Culture’ is our God. 
Everyone’s a Basil Bunting freak,
there’s music everywhere.

Tell me lies about Northumberland.

We will have our independence,
we’ll get the Gospels back.
We live off museums and tourists,
we don’t need boats or trades.

Tell me lies about Northumberland.

We’re in charge of our own futures,
we have north east citizens here.
In this autonomous republic,
we’re free as dicky birds.

So shut your eyes.

And tell me lies 

about Northumberland.




KEITH ARMSTRONG



SONG FOR NORTHUMBERLAND


Drifting in moonlight,
the dunes sing their songs.
Wings of old battles
fly all night long.
Cry of the seagulls,
curse of the ghosts;
aches of dead warriors
scar this old coast.

Hover the kestrel,
sing out the lark,
we will be free in our time.
This air is our breath,
this sea is our thirst
and our dreams are sailing home.

Wandering through castles,
their walls are our lungs.
Seaching for freedom
in country homes.
Forbears and old cares
blown in the wind;
pull of loved harbours
draws our boats in.

Surge of the salmon
and urge of the sea
leaps in our local blood.
Peel of the bluebells
and ring of bold tunes
reel in all those grey years.

Slopes of the Cheviots,
caress of the waves.
Shipwrecks and driftwood
float in our heads.
Pele-stones and carved bones
hide in these hills,
roots of new stories
in ancient tales.

Dew on our lips
and beer on the breath,
drinking the countryside in.
Bread of the landscape
and wine of this earth,
flows on these river beds.

Drifting in moonlight,
the dunes sing their songs.
Wings of old battles
fly all night long.
Cry of the seagulls,
curse of the ghosts;
aches of dead warriors
scar this old coast.

Hover the kestrel,
sing out the lark,
we will be free in our time.
This air is our breath,
this sea is our thirst
and our dreams are sailing home.



KEITH ARMSTRONG



ALSO FORTHCOMING:
Wednesday January 16th 2013 7.30pm.
Northern Voices Community Projects Annual Award event. Presentation of annual Northern Voices Community Projects Joseph Skipsey Award - and commemoration of the Hartley Pit Disaster with poems and songs. This event will also mark the 45th anniversary of the death of Newcastle writer Jack Common and the 110th of his birth, with readings from his works, poems and songs by local folk group 'Kiddar's Luck'.

Tuesday September 3rd 2013 7.30pm.
Northern Voices Community Projects. A special event to mark the 110th anniversary of the death of pitman poet Joseph Skipsey (1832-1903) with songs and readings.
Events held at Mining Institute, Westgate Road, Newcastle

16.10.12

TIBOR SCHNEIDER


Poetry readings in Durham

Published October 12, 2012.
A German poet will be taking part in two public readings when he visits County Durham later this month.
Tibor Schneider will be in Durham from October 22 until October 25 as part of a literary exchange which has been active since 1987.
Tibor, who is from the city of Tübingen – which is twinned with Durham City – will also attend Durham Book Festival events during his visit.
The visit has been organised by local poet Dr Keith Armstrong, which the help of Durham County Council’s international relations team as part of its work to support and develop town-twinning arrangements.
Tibor, whose work is often described as experimental and post-modern, will be joining local Durham poets and artists at The Half Moon Inn, in Durham City, from 7pm on Tuesday, October 23 for an informal evening of readings and music.
He will also be at a reading and Q&A session at Durham University on Wednesday, October 24 from 4pm until 5.30pm.
Both events are free and open to members of the public.
People can get further information from Dr Keith Armstrong, at Northern Voices, on 0191 252 9531.

13.10.12

SAVING GRACE

































The Grace Darling League
must be one of those 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.

In your Museum,
the Flotsam & Jetsam
drifts on a becalmed Bamburgh day.
A sharp sunlight cuts through the church window:

‘Out of the Deep have I called unto Thee’;

‘Charity, Faith & Hope’.

These tangled words that make up our lives,
the tattered wrecks, flaked skins.

I stare in awe at a piece of the Oar you used,
constructing a jigsaw of your life:

here is a scrap of your dress,
a throb of your ‘English Heart’;

here, locked up, a lock of your hair,
a handbag containing your thoughts;

and ‘There’s The Girl That I Love Dearly’,
a storm in a teacup,

a National Heroine of Japan

who coughed herself to death

like a seagull choking in oil,

like the bloodshot wreck of a dying Empire:

‘Saving Grace’,
save our souls:

Sister,
Save Our Souls.




KEITH ARMSTRONG 

the screech owl!

http://www.thescreechowl.com/the-apple-tree.html

NORTHERN VOICES COMMUNITY PROJECTS

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

11.10.12

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

(Published in Blue Max Review 2012)

6.10.12

TUEBINGEN IN 1865!


5.10.12

catch me here on wednesday 17th october!


4.10.12

TIBOR SCHNEIDER


TIBOR SCHNEIDER IN DURHAM, FROM THE TWIN CITY OF TUEBINGEN

Tibor Schneider was born in 1978. He studied Philosophy and German Literature in Tübingen, where he still lives today. He is a member and co-founder of the “Hegel-Circle” at the University of Tübingen. Hegel was a German philosopher who studied in Tübingen during the late 18th century. Reading Hegel’s “Logic” and carrying on with his ideas is the primary objective of the circle, consisting of students, post-docs, and professors. 
He wrote his master’s thesis on “Negation In the Works Of Hegel and As a Category In the History Of the World”.
As an author of poetry, Tibor Schneider participated in many poetry festivals in Tübingen and Berlin. At the “Poesiefestival Berlin” 2011, he read together with Tom Bresemann, a young poet from Berlin. In the same year, he was nominated for the “Münchner Lyrikpreis“ (Munich Lyric Award 2011). During the last three years many of his poems have been published in different magazines and anthologies.
Since 2010, he has been co-editor of “trash-pool”, a magazine for literature and art published in Tübingen. So far, the magazine reached three editions and it is available in bookstores in Tübingen, Stuttgart, and Berlin.
By accumulating a variety of extremes and contradictions, which are quintessential for Tibor’s poetry, the city of Tübingen offers him an ideal environment for his creativity. During its history, Tübingen has always been the place to fascinate minds like Hegel, Hölderlin, or Hesse and set the stage for their literary accomplishments.   
JOIN TIBOR AT THESE EVENTS:

Tuesday 23rd October. Get together, including readings, with local poets and artists, Half Moon, Durham from 7pm.

Wednesday 24th October. Reading/talk with Tibor and Keith Armstrong at German Department, Room ER 207, Elvet Riverside, Durham University from 4pm to 5.30pm followed by drinks.



TUEBINGEN/DURHAM LITERARY/ARTS TWINNING 


The twinning continues to go from strength to strength. Poet Doctor Keith Armstrong and folk-rock musician Gary Miller, lead singer of Durham band the Whisky Priests, travelled to Tuebingen at the end of March for performances in pubs, cabaret venues and schools where they performed with Tuebingen poet Tibor Schneider who visits Durham in October as part of the ongoing exchange. Tibor will join his Durham counterparts for readings at Durham University and elsewhere.
Keith will return the compliment with a trip to Tuebingen in March 2013.

Last year, Tuebingen rock musician Juergen Sturm jetted in with his music partner Mary Jane at the end of October for pub gigs, including a twinning event in Durham on Monday 31st October featuring Juergen and Mary Jane with Durham folk musicians and poets. That followed on from a visit to Tuebingen in South Germany in early April 2011 by Keith Armstrong and photographer/artist Peter Dixon. The intrepid pair worked together on a touring display featuring Armstrong's poems and Dixon's photographs documenting the unique link between Tuebingen and Durham which was staged initially in the Durham Room at County Hall, Durham in November. Armstrong performed his poetry in cafes, bars and schools and met up with Tuebingen friends, old and new, with the multi-talented Dixon capturing all of it on film. 

This trip reciprocated a visit to Durham in November 2010 by Tuebingen poets Henning Ziebritzki and Carolyn Murphey Melchers, when Juergen Stuerm also took part in a series of pub performances. There was a special event at Clayport Library, Durham City on Monday November 1st with the Tuebingen poets and special guests from Durham, followed by a rousing session in the Dun Cow when Juergen, with Mary Jane, and his Durham counterparts, Gary Miller and Marie Little belted out their lively songs.

In addition to his most recent visit, Armstrong was in Tuebingen in May 2010 with Gary Miller for performances in his favourite Tuebingen bar ‘The Boulanger’ and at a local school. This followed a special guest appearance in 2009 at the biannual Book Festival, a reading with Tuebingen counterpart Eva Christina Zeller and a visit to local schools. Eva visited Durham for readings in schools and at a special event on May 13th 2009 at Clayport Library which also featured poets Katrina Porteous, Jackie Litherland, Cynthia Fuller, and William Martin, as well as Doctor Armstrong and music from the Durham Scratch Choir and Andy Jackson.

A highly successful series of events were held in 2007 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the literary/arts twinning established by Keith Armstrong when he first visited Tuebingen in 1987 for a month’s residency, supported by Durham County Council and Tuebingen’s Kulturamt. Since then, there have been readings and performances in pubs, universities and castles, schools, libraries, book festivals, jazz and cabaret clubs, even in Hermann Hesse’s old apartment, involving poets, writers, teachers and musicians from the twin partnerships of Durham and Tuebingen.

Tuebingen’s music duo Acoustic Storm, poet/translator Carolyn Murphey Melchers and Cultural Officer visited Durham and the North East in October/November 2007. The musicians performed in Durham schools and pubs and there was a special evening in Durham’s Clayport Library to celebrate the twinning, with Keith Armstrong launching his new Tuebingen poetry booklet and performances by poets Carolyn Murphey Melchers, Katrina Porteous, William Martin, Michael Standen, Ian Horn, Cynthia Fuller, Hugh Doyle and musicians Acoustic Storm, Marie Little and Gary Miller. Margit Aldinger of the Kulturamt in Tuebingen and Brian Stobie of the International Department, Durham County Council, also addressed the audience.

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

Tuebingen visitors to Durham since 1987:

Carolyn Murphey Melchers, Karin Miedler, Gerhard Oberlin, Uwe Kolbe, Johannes Bauer, Eva Christina Zeller, Simone Mittmann, Florian Werner, Juergen Sturm, Mary Jane, Wolf Abromeit, Christopher Harvie, Eberhard Bort, Marcus Hammerschmitt, Henning Ziebritzki, Andy and  Alessandra Fazion Marx, Otto Buchegger.

Durham visitors to Tuebingen since 1987:

Keith Armstrong, Michael Standen, Julia Darling, Andy Jackson, Fiona MacPherson, Katrina Porteous, Marie Little, Ian Horn, Alan C. Brown, Linda France, Jackie Litherland, Cynthia Fuller, Margaret Wilkinson, Jez Lowe, Jack Routledge, Gary Miller, Matthew Burge, David Stead, Hugh Doyle, Peter Dixon.


These events were supported by Tuebingen’s Kulturamt and Durham County Council.


FURTHER INFORMATION: NORTHERN VOICES TEL. 0191 2529531

the jingling geordie

My photo
whitley bay, tyne and wear, United Kingdom
poet and raconteur