23.7.09

22.7.09

dat gaat naar den bosch toe

That goes to Den Bosch, sweet sweet Gerritje,
That goes to Den Bosch, sweet sweet girl.
What will we drink, dear sweet Gerritje?
What will we drink, dear sweet girl?
Brandy with sugar, sweet sweet Gerritje,
Brandy with sugar, sweet sweet girl.
Who will pay dear sweet Gerritje?
Who will pay dear sweet girl?
The first farmer's best, sweet sweet Gerritje,
The first farmer's best, dear sweet girl.

'Sweet sweet' Gerritje may very well be a notorious outlaw who operated between Antwerp and 's-Hertogenbosch. 'Sweet sweet girl' may be a reference to the fact that he was disguised as an innocent woman when he robbed people. Brandy with sugar at the time was a gallows drink, which means that in this song Gerritje was sent to the court in 's-Hertogenbosch where the death sentence was given.

17.7.09

back in amsterdam

15.7.09

Simon Vinkenoog (Amsterdam, 18 july 1928 – 12 july 2009)

Your star will shine again, Amsterdam The magic will work its way again, Amsterdam Spring is drawing near, Amsterdam You will fall in love again, Amsterdam You will move freely again, Amsterdam We will laugh again, Amsterdam

This poem by Simon Vinkenoog

12.7.09

gormley's angels

Richard Ingrams’s Week
The Independent, Saturday 11 July 2009

'Ordinary' works are far harder to explain

So-called great art – music, writing, painting – is only for the elite. The "ordinary people" have no special liking for it, and it is pointless to try to help schoolchildren appreciate it.

The sculptor Antony Gormley, famous for his massive Angel of the North (which bears a strong resemblance to a Nazi memorial to the Luftwaffe), is only the latest to articulate what is now the general consensus.

Gormley is currently enjoying a huge amount of publicity as a result of his Trafalgar Square stunt, allowing punters to pose on the famous empty plinth and enjoy 15 minutes of being miraculously transformed into a work of art.

What a difference in this lively scene, Gormley says, to the nearby National Gallery, which is to most people "off limits", and where "you need background to know what a picture means and to access emotional content".

It will be news to quite a lot of people that you need background in order to appreciate, say, Constable's Hay Wain, above, or Van Gogh's Sunflowers. As for accessing emotional content, I don't know what that means and I suspect that neither does Gormley.

If you think about it for a moment, though, you realise that the truth is exactly the opposite to what Gormley suggests. You don't need any background to appreciate those great paintings in the National Gallery.

But what requires considerable subtlety of mind and philosophical expertise is to explain to those so-called ordinary people how a boring-looking man in a suit standing on a plinth sending text messages is a work of art. That surely is a very obtuse intellectual concept well beyond the capacity of most of us.

A Magritte Museum in Brussels

Since June 2nd 2009, visitors are able to discover the Musée Magritte Museum on 2.500 m² of a building of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. Located at the Place Royale, in the very heart of Brussels, this museum was fitted out thanks to the competences sponsorship developed by the French and Belgian GDF SUEZ subsidiary companies and with the support of the Magritte Foundation. The museum will display the works of the surrealist artist, which belong to the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium and which are mainly the result of purchases as well as of the legacies Irène Hamoir-Scutenaire and Georgette Magritte. Many private collectors, as well as public and private institutions, have contributed to the Musée Magritte Museum project by loaning their masterpieces.
This multidisciplinary collection is the richest in the world. It contains more than 200 works consisting in oils on canvas, gouaches, drawings, sculptures and painted objects but also in advertising posters, music scores, vintage photographs and films produced by Magritte himself.
The Musée Magritte Museum will be, in its domain, the world reference centre for the knowledge of the artist. With the support of INEO media system, the Musée Magritte Museum has developed an online research centre, which will give access to the archives in connection with the painter's life and works.

www.musee-magritte-museum.be

7.7.09

ingroningenagain

4.7.09

william martin, poet

The website of William Martin has just come online and includes a special tribute from Keith Armstrong. The site also includes an audio clip of the poem Kildan Fragments, which was featured on Radio 3, as well as digital downloads of tracks from his Selected Works CD. There is also the opportunity to purchase signed copies of his work online. Click on the following hyperlink to access the site:

http://williammartinpoet.com

from penniless press

EDITORIAL PENNILESS PRESS ISSUE 27
The laureateship, with its implication of laurels awarded by State and Crown, is an empty anachronism which, like all such forms, survives by claiming it can serve ends it isn’t intended for. So the appointment of a female laureate is, if you read The Guardian, good news for women. How can an award bestowed by a family whose wealth, power and privilege depend on the hereditary principle, assist gender equality? How can association with a government which accepted, to the final detail, the self-justifications and excuses of the so called “masters of the universe” as they went about enriching themselves at the cost of our economic security, serve any kind of equality? Most of the bankers who ruined us were men. Most women remain poorly paid and in lower level jobs. Feminism, which once recognised equality as the ground of its success, has taken on a free market form: so long as few women achieve success, status and wealth, the job is done. I would have thought a public renunciation of the post and of the royals and time-serving politicians who bestow it, could have done much more to advance the cause of equality in general and of women in particular.
Yet even more disappointing is this, from Carol Duffy’s Guardian acceptance article:
“….poetry……matters deeply to a huge and growing number of people in this country.”
Out of an adult population of thirty million, what could be thought of as huge ? Twenty million or so? If twenty million Britons bought contemporary poetry, it would be reasonable to expect the most popular collections to sell a hundred thousand. Even Duffy, a set text, will be lucky to command that. Most collections sell fewer than five hundred. Most poets are unheard of. Poetry matters to hardly anyone as a voluntary activity. Tens of thousands of pupils and students are forced to read the stuff, but, as everyone knows, often with the result they never look at it again once they’ve got the certificate. Editing a little magazine gives a clear sense of how many people take a real interest in living poetry: I’d say between three and five thousand. Not even 0.1 percent of the population. Poetry, as something taken an interest in outside the school or the academy is virtually dead. It matters to a very small group of enthusiasts. Nor does Adrian Mitchell’s old adage explain: people don’t ignore poetry because it ignores them but because it requires effort, is disturbing and clashes with the anti-imaginative narcissism of our culture. Later, Duffy descends simply to the level of an apparatchik:
“..poetry is vital to the imagining of what Britain has been, what it is and what it might yet become.”
The kind of statement to the House you might expect from a newly-appointed poetry czar.
Duffy is apparently going to donate the £6,000 she receives to the Poetry Society for the establishment of a new poetry prize. She would do better to give a thousand a piece to six little mags. Gongs, crowns and prizes are little to do with literary value: they are about commercialism and winning the culture war. The mass imagination isn’t formed by poetry, or any kind of serious literature, but by celebrity veneration and reality tv. If you went onto Oxford St today and stopped people at random, how many would have heard of John Skelton? How many could name a poem by him? Skelton lives and works in the imaginations of the few who take the trouble to read, who see value in the long-term, who have the courage to resist the present. This isn’t as it should be but it is as it is. Ours is a culture of manufactured stupidity, which is exactly what you need to turn people into mindless consumers. Poetry should be sceptical, cynical and oppositional in such a culture. Conversations with the wind aren’t quite what we need to win today’s cultural struggle. The forces of ignorance and reaction are winning. They will continue to win if we peddle illusions about huge numbers of people turning to poetry. If literature is to do its work in fighting the murder of imagination, we have to begin from where we are: beleaguered, struggling to survive, ignored by the majority. But no-one who says so will be poet laureate nor win prizes.

2.7.09

in the grotto!

28.6.09

isle of man

Special events

John Martin Presentation

Dr Keith Armstrong is a poet from Newcastle who has devised a one man touring show on the life of the artist John Martin who was born near Newcastle and died on the Isle of Man.

Dr Armstrong will be visiting the Isle of Man in September and has agreed to give a presentation to the Isle of Man Art Society on Thursday 17th September at 7pm - 9pm.

You can contact Dr Keith Armstrong via email k.armstrong643@btinternet.com

Painting and culture combined

Welcome to The Granada Painting Experience, a five-day itinerary that combines painting, cultural history, and social interaction in the inspirational setting of Granada in Andalucia.

Our aim is simply to bring artists together, whatever their chosen medium, level, or intensity, to paint and draw with people who share a common interest in art, culture and travel.

Granada is a painter’s paradise, and resident painter Daniel Fermor-Smith, along with the other members of The Granada Painting Experience team, will be at hand to guide you to the best vantage points and assist you in your bid to capture pictorially the magical potential of this most famous of Moorish cities.

In a nutshell the objective of The Granada Painting Experience is for you to have a thoroughly stimulating and enjoyable week in Granada and to go home at the end of it with a great picture or two tucked under your arm to remember the experience by.

For more information please go to:www.granadapaintingexperience.com

27.6.09

university of sunderland press

New

from the University of Sunderland Press

Common Words and the Wandering Star

by Keith Armstrong

Introductory Offer £5.95

In this unique book, Keith Armstrong assesses the life and work of Newcastle born writer Jack Common, in the light of the massive social, economic and cultural changes which have affected the North East of England and wider society, through the period of Common’s life and afterwards. He seeks to point out the relevance of Common to the present day in terms of his ideas about class, community and the individual and in the light of Common’s sense of rebelliousness influenced by a process of grassroots education and self improvement. “Keith Armstrong has used the available archives and published materials, including Common’s own works as well as those of commentators, to write this biography. He also conducted interviews with a variety of respondents, including some of Common’s family and close friends, and draws on this original material throughout. He has thus assembled an important body of original material which will be of considerable interest to readers.” Professor Mike Fleming “Keith Armstrong's study of Jack Common is a major contribution to contemporary studies in English literature. Using sociological perspectives in his approach to biography, Armstrong not only reveals much about Jack Common the writer but shows, too, how Common’s work helped him reshape both his and our understanding of the circumstances of his life and of his generation. Through biography, Armstrong has provided a vivid picture of social and cultural change in British society. This is a well-informed book with many innovative characteristics, including the author's use of poetry as a way of exploring Common's creativity.” Professor Bill Williamson ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ To place an order
you can either Fax, Telephone or contact: Business Education Publishers Limited, evolve Business Centre, Cygnet way, Rainton Bridge Business Park, DH4 5QY Tel No: +44(0) 191 3055165 Fax No:+44(0) 191 3055504 email: info@bepl.com Common Words and the Wandering Star: A biographical study of culture and social change in the life and work of writer Jack Common (1903-1968) 978-1-906832-025 RRP £7.95 Introductory offer £5.95 Plus postage and packing on single copies - UK £1.50. For multiple copy orders or overseas orders please contact Business Education Publishers Limited.

21.6.09

NORTH TYNESIDE HERITAGE BOOK

Northern Voices Community Projects, based in Whitley Bay and North Shields, has received substantial financial backing from Awards for All and North Tyneside Council to publish a new book on the heritage of North Tyneside. The book will look at 20 local buildings in words and pictures.

Local people are invited to send in poems, songs, artwork and photographs about the following buildings and the material submitted will be selected by editors Keith Armstrong and Peter Dixon for the book due to be published for Xmas 2009:

Tynemouth Priory; Dial Cottage, Killingworth; Burradon Tower; Backworth Hall; Wallsend Town Hall and Civic Hall; Master Mariners' Homes, Tynemouth; Clifford’s Fort, North Shields; Maritime Chambers, North Shields; Dove Marine Laboratory; St Mary’s Lighthouse; Spanish City; St Alban’s Church, Earsdon; Collingwood Monument; Segedunum Roman Fort; Willington Mill; Willington Railway Viaduct; Borough Theatre, Wallsend; Grand Hotel, Tynemouth; Tynemouth Station; Knotts Flats, North Shields.

Material shoud be sent to: Northern Voices Community Projects, 93 Woodburn Square, Whitley Lodge, Whitley Bay, Tyne & Wear NE26 3JD. Tel. 0191 2529531.

email: k.armstrong643@btinternet.com

The book will be launched at a special event with readings and songs, including a performance by Keith Armstrong of a sequence of new poems.

20.6.09

tyne bridge poetry

'jingling geordie' keith armstrong has just recorded a selection of poems and an interview for a feature on the theme of the tyne bridge for bbc radio 4 due to be broadcast early in 2010.

more on this later fellow punters.

oliver cromwell

Speech on 19 April 1653 dissolving the rump parliament:

"Ye sordid prostitutes, have you not defil'd this sacred place, and turn'd the Lord's temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you, who were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress'd, are yourselves become the greatest grievance."

john ruskin - from 'unto this last'

"There is no wealth but Life. Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings; that man is richest who, having perfected the functions of his own life, to the utmost, has also the widest helpful influence, both personal, and by means of his possessions, over the lives of others."

doctor keith armstrong - the jingling geordie!

JINGLE ON MY SON!