TUESDAY 26TH SEPTEMBER 7.30pm
BENSHAM GROVE COMMUNITY CENTRE, SIDNEY GROVE, GATESHEAD
WEA NE History and Heritage Branch & NORTHERN VOICES COMMUNITY PROJECTS PRESENT:
THE PITMAN POET OF PERCY MAIN: JOSEPH SKIPSEY (1832-1903)
THE W.E.A. AND NORTHERN VOICES COMMUNITY PROJECTS PRESENT:
THE PITMAN POET OF PERCY MAIN: JOSEPH SKIPSEY (1832-1903) 185TH ANNIVERSARY OF HIS BIRTH EVENT WITH TYNESIDE LAUNCH OF A NEW BOOK ABOUT SKIPSEY PUBLISHED BY NVCP IN ASSOCIATION WITH NORTH TYNESIDE COUNCIL.
FEATURING POETRY AND SONGS BY CONTRIBUTORS TO THE BOOK, TOGETHER WITH READINGS OF SKIPSEY'S OWN POEMS, INTRODUCED BY EDITORS KEITH ARMSTRONG AND PETER DIXON OF NORTHERN VOICES COMMUNITY PROJECTS WITH FOLK MUSIC BY THE SAWDUST JACKS, KEITH GREGSON AND GARY MILLER AND ALSO FEATURING ANN SESSOMS ON NORTHUMBRIAN PIPES WITH PERIOD TUNES.
TUESDAY 26TH SEPTEMBER 7.30PM, BENSHAM GROVE COMMUNITY CENTRE, SIDNEY GROVE, GATESHEAD.
FOR JOE SKIPSEY: THE PITMAN POET OF PERCY MAIN (1832-1903)
‘He’ll tell his tale o’er a pint of ale,
And crack his joke, and bad
Must be the heart who loveth not
To hear the Collier Lad.’ (Skipsey)
To be a pitman poet
you drag words
out of the seam of a dictionary,
write against the grain
all the time
feeling the pain
of a small education,
scribbling in the dark
for a bright spark
germ of a poem.
Hewing
for rhymes,
ducking
in case the roof
of the verse
caved in on you,
Joe
it was bloody hard
to learn,
to craft a line
from the black pit
when the whole world
weighed down on you.
A man was forced
to sing,
to render a ballad
like a lamp in the tunnel,
scraping an education
from coal,
crawling along bookshelves
to find daylight,
Shakespeare,
Shelley
and melody
in the stacks
of an underground library.
KEITH ARMSTRONG
