LEN IN BLACK AND WHITE

(in memory of Len White, 23/3/1930-17/6/1994)


Len White
was a hammer.
He rammed in goals
like rivets into a ship.
Len in black and white,
belter of a heavy ball,
whacker of leather bullets
with crafty head and clever feet.
Me and my old schoolmate Peter
saw you lash the Wolves,
sending a screamer
through the posts
to ignite Gallowgate
and set the Magpies chanting.
Uncapped hat-trick scorer,
153 goals merchant,
you deserve
a statue
of your own,
dedicated
to the Skellow lad
who became a Geordie
and will always be.





KEITH ARMSTRONG

hades in hafengasse

armstrong & the mayor greet limerick bards

happy birthday from bakunin

for mick

ON THE SCROUNGE IN THE EURO LOUNGE
(for Mick Standen)

Here in this dreadful Belgian Pub,
we’re drinking
piss-poor booze.
And the Belgian bar-maid’s Belgian Breasts
reach out
for the Dutch Frontier.

Brussels Airport
plastic sprouts
games amongst it all.
Gates and terminals,
dates and walls,
the Business God grins on.

Abroad, in all this shameless wealth,
there’s a deeply shallow stench.
And we poets
drift
in one Stella stream
of rootless alienation.

Yes, it’s us again
declaiming verse
to all the whoring Nations.
Declaring love poems to the skies,
our words are caught
in flight.

Because we’re on the scrounge
in the Euro Lounge.
We’re just gagging for a quid.
We’re upside down in a screwed-up world,
hanging
on these very words.

Yes, we’re on the scrounge
in the Euro Lounge.
We’re searching for the Lost and Found.
Two old romantics
in a place called ‘Frantic’,
last terminal of dead dreams.

On the scrounge
in the Euro Lounge,
among the jewels and fancy gowns.
We’re dancing over the business types,
we’re tripping
over Stars and Stripes.

Yes, we’re poets on the scrounge
in the Euro Lounge,
with only our poems to lose.
Just cadging grants to fund our rants
and red wine to ease
the pain.


KEITH ARMSTRONG

still round our banners we'll stand

Still round our banners we’ll stand In love and truth combine

And children yet unborn shall sing the lads of Wear and Tyne.

Brave Hepburn and our delegates like rays of virtue shine

Their fame shall long be echoed round the banks of Wear and Tyne.

On Bolden Fell our flags shall wave our victories’ wreaths entwine

That peace shall be the motto still with lads of Wear and Tyne.

We envy not the rich and great whose dazzling greatness shine

While we the hardy sons of toil can labour in the mine.

O happy wives and children now all former cares resign

And sing with joyful mirth and glee the lads of Wear and Tyne.


(ANON)

Tübinger Stocherkahnrennen 2008, Samstag 14.6.2008

swinburne

Lines from ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE


It swells and welters and swings,
The pulse of the tide of the sea.


Let the wind shake our flag like a feather,
Like the plumes of the foam of the sea!


The sea gives her shells to the shingle,
The earth gives her streams to the sea.


The wave’s wing spreads and flutters,
The wave’s heart swells and breaks.


I shall sleep, and move with the moving ships,
Change as the winds change, veer in the tide.


A pulse of the life of thy straits and bays,
A vein in the heart of the streams of the sea.


I will go back to the great sweet mother,
Mother and lover of men, the sea.


Far out with the foam of the present that sweeps to the surf of the past.


Blow thy horn here for us,
Blow the sky clear for us,
Send us the song of the sea to hear.


Sea-tide and river,
And waves that shiver.


Stands a sea-mark in the tides of time.


The twilight hangs half starless: half the sea
Still quivers.


At the sea’s heart all her wrecks lie waste,
Lie deeper than the sea.

sandy bell's in edinburgh

birthday bash

KEITH ARMSTRONG'S BIRTHDAY BASH

Bridge Hotel, Newcastle

19:00 Wed 25 Jun 2008
Keith Armstrong’s birthday bash, with poets from Limerick and the North East (including Katrina Porteous, Trevor Teasdel and Paul Summers) launching a Tyneside/Limerick anthology. Plus: from Cumbria Geraldine Green, from Cork Paul Casey. Plus music from Dave Douglass, Marie Little, Tony Whittle and Ann Sessoms (Northumbrian Pipes).

Admission free
The Bridge Hotel
Castle Square
Newcastle upon Tyne

summer

a blush in staindrop church

A BLUSH IN STAINDROP CHURCH
CHRISTOPHER SMART (1722 - 1771)

‘Let Josiphiah rejoice with Tower-Mustard. God be gracious to Durham School.’

‘For my grounds in New Canaan shall infinitely compensate
for the flats and maynes of Staindrop Moor.’

The poet Christopher Smart was born in Kent, but came to Durham at the age of eleven and lived under the wing of the Barnard family at Raby Castle. He attended Durham School in the 1730s and went to Cambridge University in 1739.
Robert Browning was one of Smart's few nineteenth century fans - in fact, he seemed to regard Smart's as the greatest poetic achievement between Milton and Keats and affirmed that Smart, at least on one occasion, 'Had reached the zenith from his madhouse cell'. This positive assessment would find plenty of support today. Browning compared Smart’s ‘Song to David’ to a great cathedral.
Smart suffered from insanity after 1756, though Dr Johnson did not think he should have been locked up for this: 'His infirmities were not noxious to society. He insisted on people praying with him and I'd as lief pray with Kit Smart as anyone else. Another charge laid was that he did not love clean linen, and I have no passion for it.'
Smart was committed intermittently to an asylum in London between 1756 and 1763, during which time he wrote his amazing Jubilate Agno. Among much of this work that is vivid and strange, including the charming description of his cat Jeoffrey, there are many references to his Durham youth.

This new Northern Voices publication tells Smart’s story with particular reference to his time in Durham and includes a selection of Smart’s own poetry, along with new poetry by students from the University of Durham and Durham School and older Durham hands like Professor Stephen Regan and Michael Standen.

A NORTHERN VOICES PUBLICATION
ISBN 1 1871536 24 PRICE £5

Supported by Awards for All

marktgasse

at the new beehive inn, bradford

COMMON TOUCH

THE PLAYERS WITH THAT COMMON TOUCH



I love the players with that common touch,
Jinky Jim Smith’s nutmeg in his own box,
Albert Scanlon on the Coast Road bus,
boots wrapped up under his arm,
on his way to the game,
players with that common touch.
John McNamee swinging from a Roker cross-bar,
Mirandhina in his wooly gloves.
Gascoigne chewing on a Mars Bar
before he takes a corner,
I love the players with that common touch.
As a postman, I once delivered packets
to John McGrath’s door,
predicted the score
as he patted my head,
another player with that common touch.
Alan Suddick pulling shorts down
in the wall,
the triumphant leaps of Martins and Lua Lua,
I love the players with that common touch.
Bobby Mitchell smiling behind the Lochside bar,
the human decency of Frank Clark.
They reach your black and white soul they do,
all the players with that common touch.







KEITH ARMSTRONG

a letter from george

MELLY: IN MEMORIAM

Something sad about clowns;
something thin between laughter and tears.
Pity the dignity, the love and the hate,
the twitching wire between body and soul
and you on that stage,
drunk on rum and borrowed blues again;
unique in the balance you keep to yourself -
never quite losing it,
never quite making it;
bawling out between Magritte and Morton,
playing the droopy-drawered clown
with yourself,
you

do the Melly-Belly,
the Ovaltine,
big brash belly-laugh blues.




Keith Armstrong

the gloucester arms, penrith

The Gloucester Arms Hotel can claim to be one of the oldest inns in the country, dating from 1477. It is thought to have been the residence of Richard III, and bears his coat of arms.

long meg and her daughters

the gateshead angel

freedom

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

“Perfect freedom is reserved for the man
who lives by his own work, and in that
work does what he wants to do.”
 
R. G. Collingwood (1889-1943)