DR KEITH ARMSTRONG & DURHAM

DOCTOR KEITH ARMSTRONG & DURHAM


Keith Armstrong was founder of East Durham Writers' Workshop and the Durham Voices community publishing series.
He has compiled and edited books on the Durham Miners’ Gala and on the former mining communities of County Durham. He was Community Arts Development Worker (1980-6) with Peterlee Community Arts (later East Durham Community Arts) and 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.
He has also held residencies in Durham, Easington, Sedgefield, Derwentside, Teesdale and Wear Valley.
His commissioned work includes ‘Suite for the River Wear’ (with Dreaming North) (1989) for BBC Radio; and ‘The Little Count’ (with Andy Jackson and Benny Graham) (1993) for Durham County Council. He was the Judge for the Sid Chaplin Short Story Awards in 2000.
He has long pioneered cultural exchanges with Durham’s twinning partners, particularly Tuebingen and Nordenham in Germany and Ivry-sur-Seine and Amiens in France. In fact, he has visited Tuebingen over 30 times since he first spent a month there in November 1987 as poet in residence supported
by Durham County Council and the Kulturamt, and he has performed his poetry in the city’s Hoelderlin Tower and, on four occasions, as part of its Book Festival.
An archive of his work is held at Palace Green Library, University of Durham.

AFTER THE UK

AFTER THE UK

Shreds of the UK

flapping in the downturn,

decayed Britain

broken into smithereens.

No Kingdom now,

no United State.

We are

citizens

with no obligation

to genuflect

in front of an overstuffed Queen.

Get the UK out of your system,

no going back.

We take the power

to rule ourselves,

make community,

build our own spaces.

Break

the hegemony

of dead parties,

lifeless institutions,

let debate flower,

conflicting views rage.

We want to breathe

and strip away

executive power,

share

the beauty and culture

of these islands

around.

Make good things,

good love.

Empower ourselves

with an autonomous freedom

in a new England,

in a new Europe,

in a New World

of real ownership

and delicate emotion.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

‪

OUR SPITTAL - POEMS: KEITH ARMSTRONG PHOTOS: TONY WHITTLE

Tammy Spence he had no sense,

he bought a fiddle for eighteen pence

and all the tunes that he could play

was ‘O’er the Hills and Far Away’.

From Cow Road to Hud’s Head,

Toppye Knowe Stone and Spittal Point,

we have dredged the coal

and snapped up fish

with ‘Lovely Polly’ and all.

We have ground the corn and bone,

found the iron and cured and smoked.

We have worshipped Bart and lifeboats

and prayed to Paul and John.

We have staggered on in rain and nonconformity.

We have lurched along old shores,

drowned the thirst of sailors

with the rattling old Town Bell and the tunes of jolly Jack,

whistled and fiddled away

in the bright Red Lion light.

Jesus Light of the World,

we are the history in the barrel,

in the soaring wind

and in the foaming waves:

it is our blood,

it is our bread,

it is our Spittal,

our mirrored past.

TALES OF SPITTAL

This small space

for tall tales,

the leprous tongues of centuries,

hospitalised gossips,

words drifting out of ward windows

on a dripping wet afternoon.

Church reduced to a hung silence,

closed hearts

ready for a drink.

And there’s this man

like a tea leaf in the corners

of the Blenheim or the Red Lion or The Albion.

He’s gagging for a chat about the old days,

it’s on the lips of driftwood,

swirling in the blown down days.

Tug the fruit machine,

wallop down a pie-eyed dream.

The ghosts of Victorian ladies

hiss along the promenade

as we are hit in the face

with sepia breezes.

They come from North Sea places

and from Kelso,

Selkirk and Hawick,

they ripple the surface of the sea

and the leaves in the border forests.

Take the ancient waters,

sips of iron and sulphur,

bathe yourself in history and grime.

Pellets of sleet,

hail a watery charabanc drive,

run a hot bath

down the prom prom prom.

And let the keen and callous wind

whip up the skirts of the Tweedside girls,

so you can dance for your lives.

We are the Spittal folk,

the old Pierrots,

our songs are shattered

on ancient rocks.

Our children skip through the clutter of news.

Bless them,

bless young hearts.

Splash in Bishop’s Water,

in fishing places,

songs of herring and of salmon.

Spittal Rovers

sing again.

Leap for breath

in the ways of Spring.

RICHARD MENDHAM’S SPITTAL TIPPLE

Yon tippling illiterate Spittaler,

that smuggler of drunkenness,

thief and copier of the night.

Across the lines of sobriety,

you lurched,

carving a living

from rich streams

of whisky.

Dodging water bailiffs across rooftops,

creeping down trap stairs,

you and your gang

of fleetfooted drunks

shifted illicit dreams.

Eyes glinting in hidie-holes,

disguised in black cloth and gowns,

you sparked like bar-flies in the dark.

Dancing round brightly,

skipping school lightly,

laughed in your dens of warm cackle.

Shook the village with laughter,

gave the rude sign to Berwick,

pranced till they caught you,

hung you high

from your rafter

for daring to test

the stone-sober law.

*Richard Mendham - 1830s Spittal smuggler and counterfeiter who was tried and executed at Jedburgh in the presence of Sir Walter Scott, Sheriff of Selkirkshire.

DRINKING IN SPITTAL

See me fall out of The Elephant bar,

where I’ve been drinking with salmon.

Spittal foaming from my open mouth.

Lame, maimed, drunken,

dissolute, boisterous and poor,

I have become intoxicated by parties of pleasure.

I have strayed from the Holy Island to Brandy Well,

become awash in luggers of boozers,

staggering on smugglers’ sand.

Gin, brandy, tobacco and silk,

let me cleanse myself in the morning light,

take the clean waters of Jesus.

Walk to the Hallowstell,

past the lepers’ huts,

for drops of holy blood,

strip away with bare hands

this ugly scorbutic humour.

Clean the beaches,

clean Spittal,

clean my weary soul.

I will launch myself

into a seawater bath

and blow hot and cold

with the seasoning.

Calybeate waters of Spittal,

salts of pure iron,

you have me

chained to your heavy drinking cup.

Let my lovely heart sing

with children and larks.

Let me go plodging

in daffodils.

GIRL IN A SPITTAL WINDOW

Glancing moment,

chance look.

I was wondering

where to go,

what to do

in the seaside fret.

I am growing 

misty with dreams:

welcome to my Spittal World.

I am little in this universe,

the sun is falling,

the stars are poised.

The window cleaner

will come in the morning

and wipe yesterday 

away.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

The coastal scenery around Berwick is very fine, with rocks and cliffs, only occasionally interrupted by small bays and harbours. The nearest bathing beach to the town is in the little seaside resort of Spittal, to the south.

I was very impressed by the picture you and Tony created of Spittal.

It struck me that it was in the very best traditions of photo-journalism -

Picture Post recreated for the electronic age. I thought images and text 

showed great respect and sensibility.

JOHN MAPPLEBECK (Bewick Films)

TRAGEDY AND BLISS

 






















Riding on a stream
into Tuebingen,
severing the veins of clouds in my mind,
soaring over the little tragedies
in every single house,
ready to touch the agony again
rising from creaking floorboards
and worn-out lanes,
plastic shops
and poetic sewers.

What really is the point
of getting out of my tossing bed,
squirming through a vice-tight Security,
carrying a soiled and fraying bundle of poems
to give out via my nagging tongue to friends (and enemies);
donations to charity,
lines wishing for better days
and an end to the self-inflicted pain
we humans saddle ourselves with.

Off the plane,
I walk boldly through the jetsam
following the sun
to find a miracle of positive light
on a gleaming Weinhaus table.

Gruss Got!

It is then,
facing the rays of the new morning,
that I feel the creativity surge in my agitated bones again;
the gift of a poem from an unknown Warrior God,
liquid refreshment from a statue of Neptune,
out of place in the Marketplace,
looking for hope in a Googled world of despair.

Tell me yon Swabian chap striding past me,
someone whose handshake I’ll never know or care to,
do they call you ‘Knulp’?
And where do you think you are going
with those ashes in your overcoat pocket?
Down below to a slaughterhouse cell
or, screaming with bats, into a clanging belfry?

And yet you know I wish you well in your water,
I wish you fins and wings,
the chance to fly
with a Gypsy Moth

out of tragedy
to a little bliss
in the City of Tuebingen.


KEITH ARMSTRONG