ARMSTRONG
IN THE NETHER REGIONS
Cees
Nooteboom, a leading Dutch literary light, wrote a novel translated
as ‘In the Dutch Mountains’. I heard that some culture vulture
sought a copy in a bookshop over here and was directed by the
assistant to the TRAVEL SECTION!
I’ve
travelled a lot all over The Netherlands, sometimes with the help of
awards from Northern Arts/Arts Council and The British Council, and
there have been times, trundling over the endlessly flat polder
landscape, that I’ve been just gagging for a mountain or two.
‘Flat',
you might say, but not uninteresting if you've got an eye for detail
- and that applies to the cultural scene as well as the landscape.
From
the hectically cosmopolitan and fast talking Amsterdam to the
windswept northern city of Groningen to the carnival atmosphere of
Den Bosch in the south, I’ve travelled with poetry in my pocket to
give a series of readings and to network madly with mad Dutch poets.
I’ve
crashed down in a squat in the former Dutch Foreign Office in The
Hague and read there in the basement of the ex-Intelligence Ministry.
I’ve performed at three in the morning in the Cuckoo Club in
Groningen where, in a sparse yet merry audience, an old hippie glared
at me from a murky corner with a hamster in a cage on his knee. I’ve
read in a Circus tent in Rotterdam on a Sunday afternoon accompanied
by my folk-roots mates ‘The Whisky Priests’, a doped rhino eyeing
us suspiciously from its cage as we unloaded our gear.
And
then there was the night in Den Helder in a pub so full of drunks
that even my Northumbrian Piper was heckled. That same trip, I shared
the balcony of a bar with a large stuffed swan, bellowing out my
poetry to the punters down below like a demented seagull. Oh and then
there was the Beer Museum in Breda, crammed to the rafters with wild
and drunken Brabantians on a barmy Sunday afternoon. They roared
during the set by ‘The Whisky Priests’ and they roared during my
poetry too, so much so that I lost my voice and had to collect it
from behind the bar later.
And
then there was Utrecht where I had my jacket stolen in a cafe before
the gig, passport, bank card, air ticket, glasses, and all. After a
visit to the Police Station, it was down to the venue where, after
borrowing some reading glasses from a member of the audience, I took
the stage in fighting form. The show must go on!
In
Newcastle’s twin city of Groningen, a place I’ve come to love
after 20 visits or so, I performed at the Werkman College at a poetry
breakfast, part of Dutch National Poetry Day, and I can recall, one
wet and windy day, bumping into a pack of Frisian farmers drunk as
rats. ‘And what do you do?’ bawled one in my left ear. ‘I’m a
poet!’ ‘A poet!’, he mocked, ‘we milk cows!’,
demonstrating, graphically, with his fingers the milking technique.
Must get myself a real job I thought.
There’s
a marked difference between north and south. There are carnivals down
south in a warm and Catholic spirit. North seems bleaker, even
gloomy, though Groningen keeps going all night, as I know to my cost.
But try the Den Bosch Carnival in February, which I’ve only just
returned from, and you’ll see how crazy The Netherlands can be. The
symbol of Den Bosch, just over the border from Belgium, is, of
course, the frog. So watch out for mobs of blokes in green tights
belting out ‘When the Saints’ on their trombones. Not surprising,
therefore, that it’s the home town of the legendary Hieronymus
Bosch whose statue peers down on the leaping Carnival revellers,
including myself.
And
as for Amsterdam, well all of life is there, the nether regions bared
for all to see. One Groningen city poet told me that ‘they should
bomb Amsterdam!’ Now that’s real national rivalry for you! Yet to
me it has a magic - just stay a few times on a Prinsensgracht canal
boat or in a mice-ridden tiny-staircased flat or in the dowdy Hotel
Utopia reeking of dope, as I have done, and you’ll know what I
mean. Or take a jar or two at my Amsterdam local ‘The Karpershoek’,
across the street from the throbbing Central Station, and you’ll
mix with typical moustached Amsterdammers and Ajax fans, as well as
New York cops on holiday rubbing truncheons with re-invading German
tourists, guys from Bolton in search of cheap viagra, artists chewing
the latest postmodernist cud, sweaty bricklayers, and sweaty social
workers - well, and the odd crazy poet too.
So you can sense that my
study of Dutch culture has been pretty thorough and, of course,
ongoing, with plans for me to be back there for more readings. But
it’s not one way traffic - poets and musicians from Groningen have
performed in Newcastle and Groningen official city poets have visited
here for readings and meetings with Newcastle’s Lord Mayor, as have
teachers from the Dutch city's Werkman College. Well, it’s what
twinning’s all about, isn’t it?!
Extracts
from poems:
I
was flown by a Dutchman through a Starry Sky
across
the polluted Sea.
I
was twinning in a different land
with
a song book in my hand.
The
train tore across the frozen dykes
as
the old town swarmed with bikes
and
I thought of Vincent scraping spuds
and
Rembrandt spitting blood.
This
dark Carnival of frogs and trombones,
leaps
from the graves of beggars and cripples;
this
dualist fantasy,
this
Oeteldonk nightmare,
where
even the sewer rats dance
and
the River Dieze drinks to high heaven.
I
once saw a man who looked like you,
staring
at me like a hag of a gargoyle
at
the bar of the Bonte Palet.
He
was a dribbling grotesque,
the
kind you find among the monsters and workmen astride St. Jan’s.
A
member, no doubt, of Our Lady’s Brotherhood,
he
lived in a dream world,
a
glutton for punishment,
ogling
a lusty Brabant girl
with
his popping, panting, eyes.
He
was throwing genevers down his throbbing canal,
drinking
at the confluence of Dommel and Aa;
he
had brown paint on his hands so I knew it was you,
Master
of Alla Prima.
You
feed off tourists
on
floodlit transparencies
broken
by rippling houseboats.
You
stay drifting in memories of the Indies;
a
small piece of momentary beauty,
prettier
than Amsterdam,
more
shapely than Holland;
a
true Swan
of
the World.
In
the Hotel Utopia,
we’re
as happy as mortal sin.
You
can hear an old man crying
through
the City din.
There’s
a tap that’s always dripping,
and
walls that are paper-thin,
and,
in this Hotel Utopia,
we’re
really dreaming.
KEITH ARMSTRONG
