doctor keith armstrong - the jingling geordie!: 04/2014

30.4.14

TUEBINGEN WRITER SARA HAUSER VISITS DURHAM

tuebingen photo: peter dixon

TUEBINGEN/DURHAM LITERARY/ARTS TWINNING

The partnership with County Durham and the City of Tuebingen in South Germany was established in 1969.

Poet Doctor Keith Armstrong, who gained his doctorate at the University on Durham in 2007, following on from Bachelor's and Master's degrees there, first visited Tuebingen in November 1987, with the support of the County Council and the Kulturamt in Tuebingen, to give readings and talks there for a period of a month. Since then he has travelled to the city over 30 times and helped arrange for Durham poets, musicians and artists and their counterparts in Tuebingen to visit their respective cultural twins.

Doctor Armstrong was back in Tuebingen from Wednesday 2nd to Saturday 5th April 2014 with artist/photographer Peter Dixon for readings with Tuebingen writers Eva Christina Zeller, Sara Hauser, Tibor Schneider and Florian Neuner at Weinhaus Beck, a school visit and other networking initiatives. This followed on from his visit from Monday 4th November to Thursday 7th 2013 when he took part in a major symposium on the theme of writer Hermann Hesse who lived and worked in Tuebingen from 1895-1899. As well as joining in with the discussions and giving a reading from his poems on Hesse and Tuebingen, Keith met with poets, academics, teachers, musicians, cultural and media workers.

Sara Hauser will visit Durham from Monday 12th to Thursday 15th May 2014 for sessions at the University and meetings with local writers, artists and musicians.

Her visit has been sponsored by the Cultural Office in Tuebingen and organised by Dr Keith Armstrong and Northern Voices Community Projects with the assistance of Durham County Council's International Office.

Further information: telephone 0191 2529531.

Sara Hauser was born in 1986 in Calw (Black Forest). Living in the University City Tübingen, she studies Philosophy, International Literature and Literary Writing.

In 2012 she received a scholarship from the “First Academy of Reading Arts“. The following year, she and Tübingen‘s poet Tibor Schneider launched “hesse reloaded”, a symposium linking scientific, poetic and musical elements with Hermann Hesse's literary work as well as his relationship to Tübingen.

Influenced by the “cut-up“ technique, Sara Hauser combines and “recycles“ in her miniature and short prose splinters of films and literature as well as fragments of personal memories to a new entity. Her current writing is inspired by films of Ingmar Bergman and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Additionally, she is influenced by writers like Daniil Charms, Friederike Mayröcker or Albert Camus and his philosophy of absurdism.

Excerpts of her writing have been published in Tübingen´s magazine for literature and art “]trash[pool ”.

sara hauser with dr keith armstrong

27.4.14

BACK TO LIMERICK!

I'll be reading at On the Nail, the Locke Bar, Limerick with Noel Duffy on Tuesday September 2nd 2014.

23.4.14

OLD NEWCASTLE

CASTLE KEEP

Keep,

this history by the river.

Keep,

the stairway to the past.

Keep,

the memories singing folk songs.

Keep,

the cobbles wet with blood.

Keep,

those ballads down the centuries.

Keep,

the ancient voices in your head.

Keep,

these stones alive with music.

Keep,

the wind howling in the brick.

Keep

the days that speed our lives.

Keep,

the rails to guide you there.

Keep,

the people that you meet.

Keep,

the children's faces dancing.

Keep,

the devil in your fleeting eyes.

Keep,

the bridges multiplying.

Keep,

the moon upon the Tyne.

Keep,

the flag of lovers flying.

Keep,

your feet still

Geordie hinny.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

BLACK GATE

Black Gate,

an oxter of history,

reaches for me

with a stubby finger,

invites me into Old Newcastle,

its vital cast

of craggy characters,

Garth urchins,

dancing blades

and reeling lasses.

Black Gate,

I can read

the lines

on your brow,

the very grit

on your timelined walls,

the furrowed path

down the Geordie lane

where Alexander Stephenson stoops

to let me in

and the merchant Patrick Black

still trades in memories.

Once

there was a tavern

inside you,

that’s why

the bricks cackle

and the windows creak

with the crack of old ale

and the redundant patter

of publican John Pickell.

Black Gate,

you could say

my childhood is in your stones,

my mother and father figures,

my river

of drifting years,

waiting to greet me.

Hoist up your drawbridge,

in the startling chill

of a Tyne dawn,

this boy is with you

and with himself

in this home city

of old bones,

new blood

and dripping dreams.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

*The Black Gate is named after the seventeenth century tenant, merchant Patrick Black