tuebingen at sea!

sheffield telegraph

Geordie poets back

TWO poets from the North East, Newcastle's Keith Armstrong (the 'Gingling Geordie') and Middlesbrough's Trev Teasdel, are performing on Tuesday at Spoken Word Antics, where they last appeared in November 2005.
Back then they were the first guest writers to appear at Antics, which has since seen writers from all over the country and as far afield as Canada and the United States coming to entertain audiences in the Red Deer, alongside an eclectic mix of Sheffield poets and performers in the open mic.

Keith Armstrong is a warm, engaging performer whose poetry conveys a strong flavour of Northumbria's life and landscape. One of his more unusual projects involved touring the Northumbrian coastline with the Berlin sculptor Rolf Wojciechowski, who laid out his giant word forms on the sand for the tide to wash over while Armstrong declared his poetry to the assembled crowd through a megaphone on the beach. He has also toured with folk rock band The Whisky Priests.

In addition to his own work Armstrong organised events and projects such as Northern Voices, a creative writing and community publishing project which specialises in recording the experiences of people in the North East to promote poetry to the wider public.

Trev Teasdel is an underground performance poet, as well as a musician and former band member of the Collective Unconscious. He also runs Stockton-on-Tees's Writers Cafe.

The evening in the upstairs room at the Red Deer will also include open mic slots for any kind of spoken word, poetry, stories, dramatic monologues, or others.

Last Updated: 07 December 2007 12:24 PM

common celebration

JACK COMMON (1903-1968)

A CELEBRATION TO HONOUR HIS LIFE & WORK

marking the 40th anniversary of his death on 20th January 1968 in Newport Pagnell

ORGANISED BY NORTHERN VOICES & NORTH EAST LABOUR HISTORY SOCIETY



featuring

Music from Jez Lowe (performing from his new album 'Jack Common's Anthem'); Kiddar's Luck folk group; Doctor Socrates

with readings from Common's work by Dr Keith Armstrong (recently awarded his doctorate at the University of Durham for his work on Common)



AT THE CHILLINGHAM, CHILLINGHAM ROAD, HEATON , NEWCASTLE ON SUNDAY 20TH JANUARY 2008 7.30PM

ADMISSION £5 (£3)



TEL 0191 2529531 for further information



Jack Common was born in Heaton, Newcastle upon Tyne in 1903. His father worked at the locomotive works close to the family house in Heaton. He attended Chillingham Road Council School, where he excelled at essay writing, but left at fourteen to attend commercial college and to work in a solicitor's office. Years of indifferent jobs and unemployment led him to move to London in 1928, partly to foster his political convictions and also to escape unemployment in the north. In 1930 he commenced work as a circulation promoter on The Adelphi, a socialist journal edited by John Middleton Murry, Richard Rees and Max Plowman. He was soon employed as assistant editor and took over editorship for a period in the 1930's. Common was a contributor to The Adelphi and other journals such as New Britain, The Aryan path and The New Statesman and Nation, but it was The Adelphi which occupied most of his time during the thirties; writing political and social articles, book reviews, a column called "The Sweeper Up" and helping to shape policy and direction by working with the three editors. George Orwell was another contributor to the journal and it was through their working relationship on the journal that they formed a close friendship.

In 1939 The Adelphi was put out of print and Common sought work as a film script writer and editor for government documentary films and lived in Langham, Essex at the Adelphi Centre, a community set up in 1936. After the war he found more film work with Rank Studios as a script advisor and reporter on suitability of novels as film subjects. He also worked as a freelance for the Associated British Picture Corporation during the 1950s and 1960s, again writing and editing scripts.

In terms of his published work there are two phases to his work, the political and socially conscious essays of the 1930s and the fictional work of the 1950s, which reflect the work he was undertaking at these times.

In 1938 he published Seven Shifts, a collection of seven working men's tales of work which Common edited and introduced. In the same year he published a book of social and political essays The Freedom of the Streets. Kiddar's Luck, the fictionalised autobiography of Jack Common's life up to the age of fourteen, published in 1951, was written under conditions of great hardship. Whilst writing the book he worked as a labourer during the day and wrote and edited film scripts in the evening, using the weekends to write his novel. He was under similar financial pressure when writing The Ampersand, a further autobiographical novel, in 1953-4; despite the favourable reviews given to Kiddar's Luck, the publishers became bankrupt, leaving him without a publisher to market the books and ensuring that the book was not the financial success it should have been.

He also produced many articles for contemporary journals and magazines.

He died in Newport Pagnell on 20th January 1968 before he could complete his third novel.

tommy

TOMMY ON THE BRIDGE*

You were a miner’s son,
blinded
in the fertile seam they dragged you from
to beg out your time
on the backs of bridges
that joined others
but left you split,
splay-footed between rough stones
and the snapping tomes
of the Law of the Land
and the Water.

Your wore a casual cloth cap
that muffled your bruised head.
Your trousers sagging at your feet,
you filled that dingy trench coat of yours
reluctantly;
resigned to see life life through,
with only coins for eyes
and a bridging loan to buy
derelict clothes.

At Swing or High Level,
you found a market;
a centrepoint for the rich
to lighten their swollen burden
of conscience a trifle.
And you ‘bored’ yourself
with a dignity that rejected buttons
and accepted only the silver linings
of fat pockets,
bred on a Victorian plenty
and plenty of paupers like you.

You buried your stubbled face
in the crowds that swam the Tyne.
Years across now,
you finally supped
your last cracked gill
of darkness.

And they picked you
neatly from the swollen gutter;
linked your broken hands at rest
to bridge
an empty chest.


KEITH ARMSTRONG



* Thomas Ferens (1841-1907). Born blind and begged on Newcastle’s High Level & Swing Bridges

yer man!

'No one in the North East has written and read and
encouraged and organised so consistently and over so
long a period as Keith Armstrong. His poetry is 
different, original, and politically exhilarating.’
'It doesn't matter which way his poems are facing, or
the subjects they address, it is recognisibly the same
sensibility, each part of a unified whole, and unified
by the same, strong identifiable voice.' (Andy Croft).

doctor armstrong at tuebingen university

durham/tuebingen exchange

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

doctor armstrong

you are the drunk

YOU ARE THE DRUNK


You are the drunk who does not tell the truth;
a drunk man who cannot see the thistle.

You are drunk with your fat mouth,
drunk with the power of your own voice,
drunk with a bladdered influence,
drunk flat on your hack’s back.

You are drunk with sober committees,
drunk with pissing minutes,
drunk with a rat-arsed Culture,
drunk with a blinding self-importance.

You are drunk stupid with your own esteem,
drunk with bloated righteousness,
drunk with your stuffed belly,
drunk with a staggering certainty.

You are the drunk who does not tell the truth;
a drunk man who cannot see the thistle.



KEITH ARMSTRONG

armstrong live in germany!

sounds

SOUNDS IN THE NIGHT


Learning from others
I grow.
People fill my body
and my dreams.
They shape me.
Old friends’ words
stir my own lips.
Moving, in the street
I collect the scent
of coffee and past lovers.
I scan the faces for a glance I know.
Girls I sleep with
scar me.
My skin stretches
to make room for fresh news.
I read bulletins and lines
mass on my forehead.
Voices inside my brain
stay and sing in my ears.


These sounds in the night
make my blood
dance.
I go laughing with others.
I go teaching with others.
No one is ever self-taught.
There are millions of people
in every single thought.




KEITH ARMSTRONG

off we go!

TUEBINGEN WEBCAM


Look down from the Rathaus
and you will see me plodding
over cobbled tales.
I traipse though the clear night,
eyes stumbling across discarded dreams,
toes aching with raindrops.
My eyes sore with forgetting,
the old square undulates with the rhythm
of catcalls and pigeons
pecking at old folk’s bones.
Ancient crows swoop
on market remnants,
the scent of forgotten summers
lingering in the winter’s gutters.
I bowl
down the hill
lurching with words
that spill with slush
and the glitter of ice under the moon.
We are but Swabia’s leaves,
blowing about in a hushed city
that baffles our loves,
scattered
on the flow of the Neckar’s infernal gurgle.
We are grinning away
in our urge
for survival,
in our endurance of boredom,
the hint of romance.
Scan my breath
for more joyful moments,
pan across the skyline
to pick up the Lufthansa throb
in the beautiful clouds.
I will sing again in Tuebingen.
I will kick out the glass on Melancholy Street.
I want to hear Uhland breathe in the daft breeze,
see Hoelderlin brood on a raft.
This world is crazy
and my mind
rejoices in it.





KEITH ARMSTRONG

porthole blues

THOSE PORTHOLE BLUES AGAIN


It’s Tuesday again
and the sun in the Stella is shining.
Yellow dust fills
the dappled Porthole
with a Golden Fleece
and the jazz, hot jazz,
belts out
raging
from this pulsating lounge.
The saints and ghosts of ancient seamen
go marching in.
Let the liquid trumpet
pour out,
my legs slide to the floor
with the trombone lilt.
Cry me this river,
lurch for the ferry.
I will ping the dart
of a blue note
through your soul.
I am only a poet,
a saxophone with words,
an improvising shantyman
thanking the landlord
for still serving me:
despite all
this poetry slurping,
this lovely drivel
dribbling
from my wicked Geordie tongue.






KEITH ARMSTRONG

the bearded wonder

(who ate all the pies?)


The Bearded Wonder
takes you down a dark alley
to teach you
to write a degree.

The Bearded Wonder,
shorn of modesty,
man of power
above all.

The Bearded Wonder,
brain wrapped
in shock of hair,
hiding love.

The Bearded Wonder,
Presidential Bard,
Committee Man
so hard to please.

The Bearded Wonder
in joyless covers,
his intellect brooding
over Wor City.

The Bearded Wonder,
arse parked in dictionaries,
barks out his verse
behind our backs.

The Bearded Wonder
wears rootless hair,
could fart in any town
and crow.

The Bearded Wonder,
so chuffed with his output,
comes to tell us
how not to sing.




KEITH ARMSTRONG

parasites

“ALL RICH PEOPLE ARE PARASITES”


“All rich people are parasites”,
said the girl as she glided in,
drifting through the French window,
with a face that looked ready to kill.

She sat next to me on the chaise longue,
she had next to nothing on.
And Stockhausen’s friend played piano
and the party became a song.

Her eyes moved amongst the guests,
cutting them up with her glare.
She draped her legs across mine
and played with the strands of her hair.

“All rich people are parasites.
The future belongs to the poor.”
And she put her hand on my thigh
and she kicked her shoes on the floor.

She took me upstairs to my room,
she was drunk on red wine and champagne.
In the rich afternoon we made love,
in the evening it spat on to rain.

Her hair was wild and soaked
as we wandered through the wood.
She fell and cut her leg
and I licked it to taste the blood.

In town we sat in a candlelit pub,
with the light flickering over our lives.
Somebody tried to sell us a rose
but she told him she wasn’t in love.

“All rich people are parasites”,
I’ll forever remember those words,
and the evening we spent by the Neckar,
feeding the crumbs to the birds.




Keith Armstrong,
Tuebingen.

nee gud luck in durham gaol!

DURHAM


Cobbled webs of my thoughts
hang around your lanes.
A brass band nestles in my head,
cosy as a bed-bug.
I’m reading from a balcony
poems of Revolution.
It’s Gala Day and the words are lost
in the coal-dust of your lungs.


Your dark satanic brooding Gaol
throws a blanket over blankness:
a grim era of second-hand visions
aches like a scab in a cell.
And rowing a punt up your Bishop’s arse
a shaft of sunlight on the river
strikes me only as true,
shining into the eyes of all the prisoners
swinging from Cathedral bells.

Old Durham Town, you imprison me
like a scream in a Salvation Army song,
release me soon:

someone
get ready to hug me.




KEITH ARMSTRONG

return to tuebingen

GIRL IN HOLZMARKT by Keith Armstrong
(for Susanne, from a photograph)

Near Heckenhauer’s snoozing bookshop,
where Hesse once shelved poems,
you are standing
frail,
arms crossed lightly
in the pouring sun.
Your fine cheekbones
in shadow,
drenched face
in thought,
you listen deeply
to the bright street-harpist
plucking music from the day.
Your hair is flowing
black in the fine afternoon;
you are obviously a thinker,
fragile as a cloud;
withdrawn you are
yet still stand out
in this basking, strolling, crowd:
I think your name is Susanne
and I see your skin is milky;
and I wonder,
twelve years on,
where you have gone.
I sense
that you’ll have babies,
they are plainly in blue eyes,
and, in that filmic moment,
you do look beautiful to me:
a precious one, you’re trapped
in this snapshot album,
delicate
in not knowing
that the wall has been
pulled down.

return to north queensferry

tynemouth

MOUTHS OF TYNE 


This poet’s wild imagination
is open all hours.
Fired by the flash of barmaids
I have worshipped,
I crawl the Shields bars,
seeking memories 
of old sailors.
Thrashing through The Jungle
of sun- kissed lounges,
I look for a date
with a Tyneside Dolly,
trawl through the faded papers
for a glimpse of a dashing blade.
My thirsty history is in these pubs,
seeping through The Porthole,
swimming with the Low Lights blues.
My tongue is wagging with excitement,
I am the talk of the Tyne,
one of the many mouths
of this swilling river
in our blood.






KEITH ARMSTRONG 

the jungle

JUNGLE DAYS

Stirrings in the North Shields Jungle,
blood on the pub door.
Tigers in among the working lasses,
captains in glasses
passed out on the floor.
She’s got a price on the sole of her red shoes,
someone’s flogging fish in a corner.
What’s a sailor boy to do
with a sexy Chirton mermaid?
Her hair is long with mystery,
she’s got a dirty history.
Parrot in the corner’s
telling filthy tales.
Women come and go,
seeking out Shields romeos.
Down one
and bed one,
it’s a rough old thing;
this dive
writhing
with bought flesh;
this music in the blubber,
I can hear a baby cry.
Fishing boats leave in morning,
pile of broken hearts behind them:
harbour beauty,
harbour lovely dreams;
they will cover up the hardness,
soften her tough lips.
Bite on baccy,
snort your snuff,
she might just strut
some stuff for you.
Make you spurt
out of Tynemouth,
into the arms of the strapping sea.





KEITH ARMSTRONG

newcastle upon tyne

THE STREETS OF TYNE


I kicked out in Half Moon Yard,
bucked a rotten system.
Fell out with fools in All Hallows Lane
and grew up feeling loved.

She dragged my hand down Rabbit Banks Road,
there seemed nowhere else to take it.
We mucked about in Plummer Chare,
soaked up the painful rain.

I wanted to control my life,
shout songs on Amen Corner.
I’d carry bags of modern ballads,
hawk pamphlets on Dog Bank.

Wild girls who blazed through Pipewell Gate
taught my veins to thrill.
I caught her heart on Pandon Bank,
my eyes filled up with fear.

Wanted to carve out a poem,
inspire the Garth Heads dreamers.
A lad grew up to dance along
the length of Pilgrim Street.

I take my wild hopes now to chance
the slope of Dog Leap Stairs.
Follow the pulse of my Tyneside days,
burn passion down The Side.




KEITH ARMSTRONG

open wide!

armstrong returns to tuebingen in the spring

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO A TWIN-TOWN

I am glad to have twinned with this shapely town,
the bureaucrat who chose it was inspired,
picking through the rail lines and autobahns to seek it out,
linking it with my fleeting life.
I have travelled here a score of times and watched
my features change
with the seasons
in a twin-town’s mirror.
I have made and carelessly lost friends,
renewed the flagging feel of tenderness,
groped in the darkness for a kiss gone missing,
licked over nooks and crannies.

With local wine glinting in my starry eyes,
I have lost all tracks of time
in the cool of bowing trees;
rejoiced in the pounding of church-bells,
singing in my head.
I have dived in the shadows seeking famous sons,
slid in gutters with the down-and-outs.

This town has a brain of a University
and the guts of a stray-dog.
I have flogged it to death.

It was in this bar, at this table, in this corner,
that I looked into a girl called Karin’s eyes;
and it was at that moment, for that rich moment,
that our eyes twinned and I couldn’t wait to jet home,
write a glowing report on her glowing face
for our International Exchange Officer to file safely
under ‘Twinning Affairs’
or ‘Affairs, Twinning, New Year’.

Yes, I am glad
to have twinned with this shapely town,
inspired
by Karin’s eyes.






KEITH ARMSTRONG,
Tuebingen, Germany.

cafe royal, edinburgh

RAT IN A RAINCOAT


It was in a hotel garden
On a rainy afternoon
When a literary man took his poems in his hand
To address the gathering gloom.
He had kissed the best man’s father,
The bridesmaid and the groom.
Said the blushing bride: ‘Get the get outside,
I think he’s peaked too soon.’

Like a rat in a raincoat,
Like a vulture weather-vane,
The peripatetic poet
Is reading in the rain.
And we don’t know why he does it,
And we don’t know why he came,
But the peripatetic poet
Is doing it again.

The wedding gift he’d brought them
Was a colour photograph
Of Brecht and him out in East Berlin,
It was framed and autographed.
He was jingling like a Geordie,
He was nageling like a nyaff.
As they flung him out,
I heard someone shout:
‘Is he English, drunk or daft?’

He’s big out in Slovenia,
Where he’s called ‘the new Rimbaud’
And they treat his lines like a fine red wine -
Sort of Baudelaire Nouveau.
We’re all jealous of his genius,
That’s why he’s forced to go
And recite his pomes
To the garden gnomes
From a hotel patio.

He’s still ranting like a gobshite
Neath the dripping foliage.
As the moon climbs high in the girning sky,
He declaims his verbiage.
And that full moon is his spotlight,
And that garden is his stage,
And he hears encores in the rain’s applause
As he turns each sodden page.



Mike Dillon

commissioned by and displayed in the dickens' library, haren, the netherlands

IN DICKENSIAN HAREN

(for Henk & the Dickens’ Library)

In Dickensian Haren
this curious day,
we are men with a careworn mission;
impersonators of ill-fortune,
scraping our feet
through the back-lanes of Groningen,
in search of the famous beard
and the dribble of trashed dreams.
We are reciting the great lines of Charles
on a stumbling Sunday
and we wonder why.
Why does the suffering go on?
The inequality of chance,
the dirty rhythm of brass
rattling in banks?
The Scrooge days
the days of mindless Self,
the selfish?

For Dickens is alive and vivid this minute,
Dickens is witness.

We slaver out our words,
whip out our tongues for the public
and wonder as we wander
through the pages of Nickleby and Hard Times
what men ever learn.

We go on to admire
the bound copies
in the sacred library,
toast a last one for Charleyboy
and his mighty quill,
knowing that we’ll end up tucked on shelves
but never great,
just dust in the swollen stacks
of Mister Dickens.

But treasure the sunlight on this day,
worship the brilliant beer in the glass,
each second he told us
is precious.

He is modern in his self.
He is a star.


KEITH ARMSTRONG