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

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)

DURHAM

Cobbled webs of my thoughts

hang around your lanes.

A brass band nestles in my head,

cosy as a bed bug.

I’m reading from a balcony

poems of Revolution.

It’s Gala Day and the words are lost

in the coal dust of your lungs.

Your dark satanic brooding Gaol

throws a blanket over blankness:

a grim era of second hand visions

aches like a scab in a cell.

And rowing a punt up your Bishop’s arse

a shaft of sunlight on the river

strikes me only as true,

shining into the eyes of all the prisoners

swinging from Cathedral bells.

Old Durham Town, you imprison me

like a scream in a Salvation Army song,

release me soon:

someone 

get ready to hug me.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

IT'S THE ARMSTRONG-DIXON LINE!

http://armstrong-dixon.blogspot.co.uk/

DUBLIN POET NOEL DUFFY

http://rereadinglives.blogspot.ie/2013/04/noel-duffy-question-and-answer-session.html