white house poet

kolbe on armstrong

Uwe Kolbe
Keith Armstrong’s Open Doors

It was in The Boulanger that we first met. Where else could it have been? Keith Armstrong, it seems, knows his way about here even better than in many places between Durham in the North-East of England, Groningen in Friesland, Amiens in Picardie, Berlin in Prussia and, well, Tübingen in Württemberg (‘to name but a few’). A traveller with an open mind and without any fear of contact; strange lives, countries and people succumb to his poetic and real incorporation. This is so for the same reason for which our romantic poets sought out Heaven and every abyss: it is to understand “why I am back on Earth; must come to know myself and the land that bore me.”

It was a reading, that first time and the performer did not hide behind the customary glass of water, neither did he sit on a chair, but stood, as he always does. I have experienced it often enough by now how he explains his poems, how he reassures himself, again and again, of his audience. We are to understand every aspect and every point. If we don’t, he doubts extensively, himself, the language, the word. Then on to poem and ballad. Keith Armstrong is a bard, too, who has the knack of writing real songs. That’s why every place is named, why the names of persons he grants an appearance in verse are correct, why his poems have historical causes and sometimes take historic shape, just like the performance. Historic.

But one should, while laughing, never forget: this poet is someone who in his biography and work inseparably unites wit and long gained knowledge, enthusiasm and great talent, pluck and social commitment....This is a man who conquers, with his poems and charms, pubs as well as universities. He has always been an instigator and an actor in social and literary projects, an activist without whom the exchanges between the twin towns of Durham and Tübingen would be a much quieter affair. That he is a friend of many friends, able to open the most amazing doors for his guests, can be taken as read. Keith Armstrong’s songs of a sensitive self in an ugly world and of a beautiful world in an unfathomable self are capable of opening the hearts of listeners and readers.





Uwe Kolbe
Oberlin, Ohio September 2007

(translated by Eberhard Bort)

because i drink

DRINKING IN THE ATMOSPHERE

(for Klaus)

‘The sheer banality of everyday life drives anyone of the slightest sensitivity into the arms of drugs and booze.’ (John Keenan).

‘Academic prizes, prizes for virtue, decorations, all these inventions of the devil encourage hypocrisy, and freeze the spontaneous upsurge of a free heart.’ (Baudelaire).


Because I drink too much,
I do not qualify for a grant.
Because I drink too much.

Because I drink too much,
I’ll never taste success like you.
Because I drink too much.

Because I drink too much,
I cannot see the world like you.
Because I drink too much.

Because I drink too much,
I’ll never write a sober poem.
Because I drink too much.

Because I drink too much,
I’ll go on missing express trains.
Because I drink too much.

Because I drink too much,
I’ll miss the joy of a real career.
Because I drink too much.

Because I drink too much,
I’ll take too many risks and die.
Because I drink too much.

Because I drink too much,
I’ll always play the fool too much.
Because I drink too much.

Because I drink too much,
I’ll be an unprofessional poet.
Because I drink too much.

Because I drink too much,
I’ll never match your reputation.
Because I drink too much.

Because I drink too much,
I’ll float on waves of self-destruction.
Because I drink too much.

Because I drink too much,
I’ll sing in all the world’s wrong places.
Because I drink too much.

Because I drink too much,
I’ll override the Party lines.
Because I drink too much.

Because I drink too much,
I’ll treasure all these drunken times.
Because I drink too much.

Because I drink too much,
I’ll dance on your Arts Council’s grave.
Because I drink too much.



KEITH ARMSTRONG

armstrong in cork!

CORK READING - 15th October 2007

Another full line-up in the Hayloft meant a great night for all involved. Thanks to Keith Armstrong and Paul Summers who set off the evening with their respective repertoires, both being humourous and strikingly sobering at the same time. Two quality performances that inspired a great welcome. We look forward to their return in late 2008.

All in all a fantastic night.


PAUL CASEY

cuisle 2007

Press Release
Cuisle 2007; Limerick City International Poetry Festival
17th – 20th October

2007 marks the eleventh Cuisle Festival in Limerick City, celebrating local, national and international excellence in poetry. The festival will take place from Wednesday 17th to Saturday 20th October with 23 poets from 6 different countries visiting Limerick over 4 days. Limericks’ long association with poetry makes Cuisle the perfect opportunity and place for audiences to extend their experience of poetry during four festival days of convivial discussion readings, book launches and workshops with the leading contemporary poets of our time.

The festival format over the four days includes lunchtime readings, readings for secondary school students, book launches and evening readings.

Some of this years line up of poets include international visiting poets Keith Armstrong (UK), Tom Cunliffe (UK), John Davies (UK), Hugh Dunkerley (UK), Gary Gach (USA), Barbara Korun (Slovenia), Ivica Prtenjaca (Slovakia), Jackie Willis (UK). Irish poets of international importance include Michael O’Siadhail, Michael Longley, Desmond O’Grady, Gabriel Fitzmaurice, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Seán Lysaght, Cathal Ó Searcaigh, Paddy Bushe and Theo Dorgan.

Five book launches will take place during the festival, each title an exciting new presence in the literary Irish writing scene; two journals of poetry (i) REVIVAL No. 5, and (ii) The Stony Thursday Book. Fifty Years 1957-2007 by Knute Skinner, and Twenty One Sonnets by Gabriel Fitzmaurice, both published by Salmon Poetry. Desmond O’Grady’s book My Alexandria will also be launched.

To celebrate the achievements of Limerick poets, a series of lunchtime (1pm) readings at Isaacs in O’Connell Street will celebrate the work of Teri Murray, Gerard Sheehy, Noel Harrington and Dominic Taylor.

The annual Cuisle Debate will take place on Saturday 20th at 3pm. The title of this year’s debate is ‘Can Poetry Make Things Happen?’ Paul Muldoon wrote “for poetry can make things happen, not only can, but must …..” Seamus Heaney in his Nobel lecture of 1995 acknowledges the power of poetry - “…..: the power to persuade that vulnerable part of our consciousness of its rightness in spite of the evidence of wrongness all around it, the power to remind us that we are hunters and gatherers of values, that our very solitudes and distresses are creditable ….”. Cuisle will bring together and harness all the energies of the poets to rediscover the power and the pulse of poetry.

Limerick City Gallery of Art and Limerick City Library will host workshops relating to poetry during the festival, including Bosca Filíocht (Poetry Box) where each child will be asked to pick a verse from a descriptive poem and to illustrate that poem with the help of artists Suzannah O’Reilly and Fiona Quill. There is also an opportunity for children to be part of a poetry master-class during the festival, places are limited, booking is essential.

For further information on all our events during the Cuisle Poetry Festival contact by email artsoffice@limerickcity.ie or call into Belltable Arts Centre for a festival brochure and book tickets on 061 319866.


This festival is funded by The Arts Council, Limerick City Council, Failte Ireland, Poetry Ireland and the Belltable Arts Centre

travels

poet keith armstrong visits ireland with paul summers mid-october for appearances in cork and at the cuisle international poetry festival in limerick.
in november, he's in tuebingen for a week of workshops and readings at the university.
february 2008 sees him in den bosch and groningen in the netherlands and later in the year in prague (to renew his collaboration with musician jakub zahradnik), berlin (with poet uwe kolbe), tuebingen again, followed by iceland and lake orta, italy.
watch this space for finalised details.

ALAN BROWN ON KEITH ARMSTRONG!

‘My old cracked crumbling Muse salutes you! Wanting, above all else, to outdo all the others who have praised you - and your fine gift of wordcraft.
It seems to me that you go from strength to strength. God bless you - he has given you a great talent. Continue dear friend and brother and always prosper as you deserve to. Continue to amaze and delight us by your fine crafted poetry!’ (Alan C. Brown, Tyneside Poets).

armstrong in the new statesman

Letter of the week
Published 26 May 2003


Just as Julia Darling's article praising Newcastle (The Back Half, 19 May) was going to press, another suicide fell from the Tyne Bridge. Quite a regular occurrence these days, but hushed up by the city fathers behind the European Capital of Culture bid. Darling is one of the cluster of arts professionals, in and out of the council's and the arts board's cat flaps, who have thrown in their lot with the quango executives and cultural businessmen behind the bid. Like Darling, many of them have acquired Tyneside roots because they have none of their own to speak of.
I remember Gary Chaplin, of the renowned north-east family that spawned the novelist Sid Chaplin, telling me that he felt like a cultural leper at arts meetings because he was invariably the only indigenous representative in attendance, drowned out by "third way", middle-class voices getting excited about Newcastle's "great creative potential".
In the 18th century, Newcastle was a significant provincial publishing centre, with republicans such as the wood engraver Thomas Bewick and the political dissident Thomas Spence plying their wares around its nooks and crannies. Darling is obviously largely unaware of the dissident socialist republican Geordie tradition, which would not touch the media hype surrounding the "Newcastle/Gateshead - buzzin'" campaign with a stotty cake.
If she were sincere in her desire to liberate the Geordies from the grime of the past, she might move over and let a real indigenous writer speak in your columns. That might convince the judges that the Capital of Culture bid was indeed rooted in the community - and not just an artificial construct imposed from on high by people who prostrate themselves at the feet of capital in their yearning for a new Hilton on the banks of the Tyne and for more call-centres, as our once-proud manufacturing base continues to be shat upon.
On Tyneside, we are submerged in a tide of "culture" at the moment, backed by totally uncritical local media that worship the arse off Antony Gormley but haven't a clue what is good, bad or just plain indifferent any more. The sooner we face reality, the better. Newcastle is not Barcelona - it is beautiful, shitty little Newcastle.
Keith Armstrong
Whitley Bay, Tyne and Wear

success!

jeremy reed

‘It’s up to you to react against Auden’s negative belief that ‘poetry makes nothing happen’, and to prove the opposite - that it changes the world every single moment with the tang of biting into a ripe orange.’

(Jeremy Reed)

from a swahili phrasebook

There are strangers in the field.
There is a child at the door.
Thre are eggs in the basket.

Drunkenness takes away sense.
Trains go by every day.
Every year my father cultivates a field of rice.

I am working in order to get money.
I am working so that my child may get clothes.
Sing your songs that I may hear them.
Sing your songs so that I may have a chance of hearing them.




KEITH ARMSTRONG

north tyneside folk

NORTHERN VOICES PRESS RELEASE 17/8/2007

NORTH TYNESIDE FOLK


The innovative Northern Voices creative writing and community publishing project has received a grant of £1000 from North Tyneside Town Centres Management towards a new project looking at a range of innovative community small businesses in Whitley Bay, North Shields and Wallsend.

A brochure and display will be produced, with features on each enterprise, including photographs, interviews and a poem on each small business by writer Keith Armstrong.

More info: NORTHERN VOICES tel 0191 2529531

christopher smart (1722-1771)

NORTHERN VOICES PRESS RELEASE 16/8/2007


The North East creative writing and community publishing enterprise Northern Voices Community Projects has just received an Awards for All grant of £5150 for work on a touring show, display and publication on the poet Christopher Smart (1722-1771).
Smart's works include A Song to David and Jubilate Agno, both of which were at least partly written during his confinement in an insane asylum.
Smart was the son of Peter Smart, of an old north country family, and was born at Shipbourne, Kent. His father was steward for the Kentish estates of William, Viscount Vane, younger son of Lord Barnard of Raby Castle, Durham.
Christopher Smart received his first schooling at Maidstone, and then at Durham School. He spent part of his vacations at Raby Castle, and his gifts as a poet gained him the patronage of the Vane family.
His idiosyncratic Jubilate Agno was published in 1939 and has become relatively well-known. One section of the poem, beginning with "For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffrey", has been reprinted separately and is popular among cat-lovers.


FURTHER INFO: tel 0191 2529531

WORK FOR A POET



From The Wooden Doll,
I clock a ferry
cutting through The Tyne.
It speaks of distance,
smacks of seagulls
soaring over fresh fish,
the chips off the Old Shields’ block.
From this unique pub window,
you can smell Scandinavia,
hear Grieg whistle a folk tune
in the same breath as Lindisfarne.
A boat tugs at my roots,
brings out the wordy sailor in me.
I am a poetry boozer,
a staggering ship,
slopping my beer all over the Quay.
Why me?
Why am I the one
who draws the bird
stuck on Stan Laurel’s head?
I will scribble down another pint.
Tomorrow I will leave
for Oslo,
to find
more work for a poet,
and a different kind of drunk.



KEITH ARMSTRONG

sound city

‘SOUND CITY’ - CD REISSUE FROM ‘NORTHERN VOICES’
First released in 1991, with the aid of a Northern Arts grant, ‘Sound City’ is a newly reissued CD by prolific Tyneside poet Keith Armstrong, recorded with a string of top musicians - Rick Taylor, Bruce Arthur, Pete Challoner, Ian Carr, Bob Fox & Frank Gibbon - and digitally remastered by Dean Jones at The Old School House.
From Newcastle’s Dog Leap Stairs and across Europe to Moscow and Leningrad, the album is a travelogue in poetry, with the odd love anthems scattered in between.
Armstrong’s latest album ‘Out to Sea’, a poetic journey up the Northumbrian Coast, has been a great success aready and look out for further reissues in the pipleline due out for Xmas 2007 - ‘The Poetry of Percussion’, featuring Armstrong and Bruce Arthur, and ‘The Elvis Diaries’, the story of the life and times of Elvis Presley of Craghead, with poetry by Armstrong and Elvis songs by Durham’s Jim Nunn.
All albums can be ordered at £5 each (no postage required) from ‘NORTHERN VOICES’.
Northern Voices, 93 Woodburn Square, Whitley Lodge, Whitley Bay, Tyne & Wear NE26 3JD, England. Tel 0191 2529531. Email: k.armstrong643@btinternet.com

happy days in tuebingen 2007!

durham miners' gala!

east berlin 1990

SAVING GRACE



The Grace Darling League
must be one of those 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.

In your Museum,
the Flotsam & Jetsam
drifts on a becalmed Bamburgh day.
A sharp sunlight cuts through the church window:

‘Out of the Deep have I called unto Thee’;

‘Charity, Faith & Hope’.

These tangled words that make up our lives,
the tattered wrecks, flaked skins.

I stare in awe at a piece of the Oar you used,
constructing a jigsaw of your life:

here is a scrap of your dress,
a throb of your ‘English Heart’;

here, locked up, a lock of your hair,
a handbag containing your thoughts;

and ‘There’s The Girl That I Love Dearly’,
a storm in a teacup,

a National Heroine of Japan

who coughed herself to death

like a seagull choking in oil,

like the bloodshot wreck of a dying Empire:

‘Saving Grace’,
save our souls:

Sister,
Save Our Souls.




KEITH ARMSTRONG


(as published in 'Grace Darling: Victorian Herione' by Hugh Cunningham, Continuum, 2007)

IN LEEUWARDEN

STORM IN LEEUWARDEN


Never so swept with wind,
never so wet.
Our bones rattling in its carriages,
the train, blown across the fields,
tears into the heart of Leeuwarden,
a town freezing
with Frisian breath.

I came to sing
but my song was soaked
by the sobbing sky.
The whole country opened up
and drenched us
in a bitter history.

I had left my umbrella at home
to protect my friends
from the patter of Councillors.
Now I needed to shelter in a woman’s warmth,
read her my poems,
to make all her limbs
melt round me,

kiss me hard
in downtown Leeuwarden;

in all its wetness,
throw me roughly

to the wild land.




Keith Armstrong