PRESS
RELEASE
THE
POETRY OF JAZZ
Tyneside
artists and jazz enthusiasts Keith Armstrong and Peter Dixon have
created a display of colour paintings, images and poems celebrating
the greats of the jazz world from Lous Armstrong to George Melly,
Billie Holiday to Charles Mingus and many more. The exhibition can be
viewed at JG Windows in Newcastle's Central Arcade in the
Printed Music Department on first floor of the store for the
immediate future.
Contact
- Keith Armstrong tel 0191 2529531 or Rupert Bradbury (JG Windows)
tel 0191 2321356 for further information.
KEITH
ARMSTRONG
Born
in Newcastle upon Tyne, where he has worked as a community worker,
poet, librarian and publisher, Doctor Keith Armstrong now resides in
Whitley Bay. He is coordinator of the Northern Voices Community
Projects creative writing and community publishing enterprise.
He
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 culture in the North East of England.
His
poetry has been extensively published in magazines such as New
Statesman and Poetry Review as well as in the collections Splinters
(2011) and The Month of the Asparagus (2011) and broadcast on radio &
TV.
He
has performed his poetry throughout Britain and abroad.
In
his youth, he travelled to Paris and he has been making international
cultural pilgrimages ever since.
PETER
DIXON
North
Shields based artist, photographer and graphic designer Peter Dixon
began his working life as a designer at the Shields Gazette, later
becoming Senior Visualiser at the North East Co-op. He has worked in
several advertising agencies and runs his own design company.
In
2012 he had a major exhibition of paintings and photographs, entitled
The River and the Slake, displayed at Bede’s World, Jarrow.
He
has produced and co-written many publications and exhibitions
for Northern Voices Community Projects.
MELLY
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
