THOMAS SPENCE 1750-1814 - WATCH OUT FOR BICENTENARY BOOK AND EVENTS IN NEWCASTLE & LONDON IN THE NEW YEAR

THE HIVE OF LIBERTY

(AFTER THE NAME OF THOMAS SPENCE’S BOOKSHOP AT 8 LITTLE TURNSTILE, HOLBORN)

I am a small and humble man,

my body frail and broken.

I strive to do the best I can.

I spend my life on tokens.

I traipse through Holborn all alone,

hawking crazy notions.

I am the lonely people’s friend.

I live on schemes and potions.

For, in my heart and in my mind,

ideas swarm right through me.

Yes, in this Hive of Liberty,

my words just flow like wine,

my words just flow like wine.

I am a teeming worker bee.

My dignity is working.

My restless thoughts swell like the sea.

My fantasies I’m stoking.

There is a rebel inside me,

a sting about to strike.

I hawk my works around the street.

I put the world to rights.

For, in my heart and in my mind,

ideas swarm right through me.

Yes, in this Hive of Liberty,

my words just flow like wine,

my words just flow like wine.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

FOLK SONG FOR THOMAS SPENCE

(1750-1814)

Down by the old Quayside,

I heard a young man cry,

among the nets and ships he made his way.

As the keelboats buzzed along,

he sang a seagull’s song;

he cried out for the Rights of you and me.

Oh lads, that man was Thomas Spence,

he gave up all his life

just to be free.

Up and down the cobbled Side,

struggling on through the Broad Chare,

he shouted out his wares

for you and me.

Oh lads, you should have seen him gan,

he was a man the likes you rarely see.

With a pamphlet in his hand,

and a poem at his command,

he haunts the Quayside still

and his words sing.

His folks they both were Scots,

sold socks and fishing nets,

through the Fog on the Tyne they plied their trade.

In this theatre of life,

the crying and the strife,

they tried to be decent and be strong.

Oh lads, that man was Thomas Spence,

he gave up all his life

just to be free.

Up and down the cobbled Side,

struggling on through the Broad Chare,

he shouted out his wares

for you and me.

Oh lads, you should have seen him gan,

he was a man the likes you rarely see.

With a pamphlet in his hand,

and a poem at his command,

he haunts the Quayside still

and his words sing.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

(from the music-theatre piece ‘Pigs' Meat’ written for Bruvvers Theatre Company)

MY POET FRIEND RENSE SINKGRAVEN

IN THE TOWN OF GORT WITH RENSE SINKGRAVEN, FROM NEWCASTLE'S TWIN CITY OF GRONINGEN, ON OUR IRISH TOUR

VISMARKT

(for Rense Sinkgraven)

The Mayor is bothered

about the litter in my brain;

the dross of poems

spilled out onto bar floors

and the fishy streets of Groningen.

He prowls the gutters

of my verse,

seeking to tidy up

the rhymes

and times I slopped

erotic images

between the lines

of council meetings.

The detritus

from lost poetry readings

gathers up

in windy corners

on this market day,

curled up

into sodden memories,

dark with crumbling print.

This city’s flags

continue

to flap proud,

defiant

in the rampant northern breeze,

fingers of lost empires

forlornly

waving

at laughing girls

and daring boys

dashing headlong

over stinking bones.

You will not make me clean,

I am a dirty poet

whose head aches

with dark subversive thoughts.

I am not tidy,

my very speech

remains unruly

as a mad professor in the Huis de Beurs.

I will mess up your streets

with a dynamic anarchy

until a true democracy

makes a clean breast of things

and the road sweepers

and dreamers

of the Vismarkt

share a green and wondrous world.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

Groningen

BACK FROM DUBLIN!

IN THE GALWAY HOOKER BAR

(Heuston Rail Station, Dublin)

I’m back in the Galway Hooker,

heading out to the west

and, as usual, it’s teeming

with the scheming 

pond life of Dublin:

the newts

and wits

who twinkle 

in this bowl 

of moving humanity,

at swim

in sunlight,

slumped

in a beaten economics

and those boom days 

that are past.

And Jimmy Joyce and his literary travellers

leer at us from a corner 

of streaming consciousness

and bad girls’ skirts

drift upwards

in an afternoon 

with miles ahead

and the promise

of a kiss 

of Irish Coffee.

I’m crawling

today along

this beaten track to Limerick,

the chance occurrence

of a poetry event,

the opportunity for fickle friends

to catch my dreams

in inquisitive ears

and despatch 

my skimming words

to the gutters of shot memories.

‘By God she’s a looker,

that one on the stool,

making an awful fool

of  a lad in the Hooker.’

‘Her legs go the whole way,

her terrible sin,

she sings

from here to Galway.’

And then The Boys from Tipperary 

they’re here

in a clump of blazers and ties

and every one has a lass

on his hurling arm

and a pint of Guinness in his face.

We envy them

their youth and not their sense,

we wise old men of Heuston

who’ve seen the heroes come and go,

heard the guns ring out

across the Station

and learnt 

to savour

the slaughter

in our glasses.

But now friends 

we must be 

heading off 

to the dawn

and hope 

that these trains 

we leave behind

can find their way

to that which our history 

sheds.

So remember

Sean Heuston,

the railway clerk,

a crucifix he kissed

and the freedom he died for,

every drink

that you down 

in the Hooker. 

KEITH ARMSTRONG

The Galway Hooker is a traditional fishing boat used in Galway Bay off the west coast of Ireland. The hooker was developed for the strong seas there. Its sail plan consists of a single mast with a main sail and two foresails. Traditionally, the boat is black (being coated in pitch) and the sails are a dark red-brown.

THOMAS SPENCE (1750-1814) - THE HIVE OF LIBERTY

(AFTER THE NAME OF THOMAS SPENCE’S BOOKSHOP AT 8 LITTLE TURNSTILE, HIGH HOLBORN)

I am a small and humble man,

my body frail and broken.

I strive to do the best I can.

I spend my life on tokens.

I traipse through Holborn all alone,

hawking crazy notions.

I am the lonely people’s friend.

I live on schemes and potions.

For, in my heart and in my mind,

ideas swarm right through me.

Yes, in this Hive of Liberty,

my words just flow like wine,

my words just flow like wine.

I am a teeming worker bee.

My dignity is working.

My restless thoughts swell like the sea.

My fantasies I’m stoking.

There is a rebel inside me,

a sting about to strike.

I hawk my works around the street.

I put the world to rights.

For, in my heart and in my mind,

ideas swarm right through me.

Yes, in this Hive of Liberty,

my words just flow like wine,

my words just flow like wine.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

Thomas Spence was born in Newcastle in 1750. Spence was the leading English revolutionary of his day, with an unbudgeable commitment to individual and press freedom and the common ownership of the land.

His tracts, such as The Rights of Man (Spence was, perhaps, the first to use the phrase) and The Rights of Infants, along with his utopian visions of 'Crusonia' and 'Spensonia', were the most far-reaching radical statements of the period. Spence was born in poverty and died the same way, after long periods of imprisonment, in 1814.