POETRY TYNESIDE LINKS WITH POETRY NEW ZEALAND

"She Quakes" is the first contribution in what is intended to be a fruitful link with the New Zealand Poetry Society. This poem is particularly poignant as Tynebard was in Christchurch in December 2010 during the series of earthquakes, two more significant ones of which struck there recently.



SHE QUAKES


Earth groans,


her trembling begins,


her tectonic plates shift.






Ground cracks and leaps,


burping sludge bubbles upwards,


locked energy, released in a noisy belch.






Her movement, restrained for centuries,


escapes, in a series of sideway jolts,


stretching her reach, testing her strength,


- she quakes.






On her surface, green and warm,


above her inner heat and energy,


small creatures scatter.






Constructions


                            collapse


                    topple


            and pancake


to the ground.




The creatures are crushed,


cut and burnt.


Gases escape and ignite.






Rivers seek new paths,


waste and water break free.






Blocks of stone fall from


where man has put them:


heaped on her surface,


broken, disorderly.






Bells of iron shout as they fall.






Still stretching and moving,


she continues to quake,


seeking a new position to rest in.







Deryn Pittar (deryn@xtra.co.nz)

FROM THE ARCHIVE: INDIAN POETRY WITH THE TYNESIDE POETS

DIARY DATES

The North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers, Neville Hall, Westgate

Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 1SE. Tel: 0191 232 2201.

DIARY DATES – NOT TO BE MISSED

THURSDAY 26 JANUARY 2012

THE NEW HARTLEY COLLIERY DISASTER

To commemorate the anniversary of the 1862 disaster a programme of events are planned in the area. Norman Jackson’s talk at the Institute on Thursday 26th January will be supplemented by poems and music, the programme for the evening is:

5:30pm Tea and Coffee in the Library.

6:00pm Lecture by Norman Jackson.

6:40pm Questions.

Adjourn to the Library. Buffet and drinks.

7:00pm Launch of a new book about the Hartley Calamity, edited by Keith Armstrong and published by Northern Voices Community Projects with the support of North Tyneside Council.

Keith Armstrong, Catherine Graham and others will read poems and stories from the new book including Joseph Skipsey's Hartley ballad, with singer/songwriter Gary Miller performing Keith’s Hartley lyric and other mining songs and piper Chris Ormston performing his Lament for Hartley and other appropriate tunes.

Copies of the book will be available for sale during the event.

8:30/9:00 close.

COMMEMORATIONS IN MEMORY OF THE MINERS WHO LOST THEIR LIVES IN THE NEW HARTLEY PIT DISASTER INCLUDE:

14 January 2012: New Hartley Memorial Hall,

Beeswing in concert. Also featuring Keith Armstrong.

15 January 2012: 11am, Memorial Service at St. Alban's Church.

15 January 2012: 4pm, Memorial Service at New Hartley Memorial Hall accompanied by Ellington Brass Band. The new Memorial Banner will be unveiled.

15 January 2012: 7.30 – 9.30pm Whitley Bay Playhouse, a concert by the Grimethorpe Brass Band.

16 January 2012: 11am, A short memorial service will be held at the New Hartley pit head in the memorial garden.

JOSEPH SKIPSEY – A COMMEMORATION

Saturday 17th  March from 7 – 9pm in the Library.

2012 provides several anniversaries of mining disasters so, to re-balance this a little, we’ll be holding an event celebrating the 180th anniversary of the birth of Joseph Skipsey, the Tyneside Pitman Poet.

The event includes Keith Armstrong, Gary Miller(Whisky Priests) and pipe player Chris Ormston, with readings from Skipsey’s poetry and an account of his life.

During the evening, the annual Northern Voices Joseph Skipsey Award will be presented to a deserving local writer.

GREY’S MONUMENT

Grey –

this man and his brain’s conception,

clasped in stone.

Disdainful figure

raised

on a firm dry finger;

proud-stiff

above a time-bent avenue of dwindling lights.

The Earl’s pale forehead is cool and cloudy;

unblinking,

he views us all (as we view him)

in the same old, cold, way –

through the wrong end of a battered telescope,

through the dusty lens of history.

Strip away the tinsel

And this city’s heart is stone.

Keith Armstrong

Night Watch

Town of a thousand holes, at the bottom


Of each a dark boggart lurks cunningly


Creating mischief for careless souls who’re


Simply passing. Urban plastic tendrils


Squirm, coil and wrap around the bed ridden


Riding alive through comatose dreaming.


All the while, tower blocks round and about,


Facades irritated by rashes of light


Wind is scratching, rain hardly soothing,


Pluck up their concrete roots and, like golems,


Lurch along through pedestrian precincts,


Passed shops and stores blinded by steel shutters


Billed with vainglorious posters proclaiming


Imminent revolution, this week’s sales,


Or the immanence of God and the end


Of Days. Even as ungainly tower blocks


Retreat beyond traffic lights, boggarts


Emerge from excavations flimsily


Fenced round with barbers’ poles, in such a way


Shadows might ease free from corporeal


Bodies responsible for casting them.


Night is the product of curtains being drawn


Against streets that have to be abandoned


To darkness, light so selfishly horded


In living rooms, in the eyes of voyeurs


Who do not realise televisions


Are vampires that exist by sucking life-time


From their fascinated victims. Too late


They switch off, for it’s bed time, deathbed time.


The night watch is running slow, leaden hands


Weighing every heavy second, holding


Each one just too long, making the minutes


Fall behind the clock. A hospital cot


Easily contains these remains of a man,


So little of him left, his shadow gone.


Even breath can be no longer his own,


Generous town sharing its air with him


Via one of those serpentine urban tendrils


Worming its way through the wall to his nostrils.


Hardly a burden with so little left


Him to draw from his account. Family


Come and sit and sit and go in relays


Of concern, keeping his lips barely moist


With final kisses and cool water soaked


Into pink sponge swabs on thin lollysticks


Looking like unspun candyfloss. Night watch


Knits or reads or plugs into World Service


While drowsing on the one comfy armchair.


For all that time is tardy dawn still comes,


Shift changes, while night and day will remain


All the same to him even as tower blocks


Step back into place, boggarts burrow back


Into earth and the curtains are drawn back,


Back and back, releasing light from their rooms


To illuminate awakening streets


And the living realising they are so.


                                                               Dave Alton

SUN OVER ST. JAMES' PARK

Sun sets on Empire,

a football sinking in the sky.

Dreams are gone,

the kicks we had.

I see their ghosts in The Strawberry night:

Len White and George Eastham,

Gordon Hughes and Liam Tuohy,

Alf McMichael, Jimmy Scoular.

Roaring Boys of one hue or another:

Alan Suddick and Jim Smith,

John McGrath and Dick Keith,

Dave Hilley and Andy Penman.

Stalwart lads from an industrial past,

hold on to those memories.

Golden Balls of light

shine on the surface of The Tyne,

ripple in the mind.

Great times were had

and peanuts tanner a bag.

Swaying lads on the Popular Side,

Oxo down our throats.

Chuck us a cup,

we're thirsty.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

from 'true faith' the newcastle united fanzine for which keith armstrong has been poet-in-residence

PHOTOS: TONY WHITTLE

Piano

When Gagarin finally opened his eyes


He saw what Ptolemy saw, it was just


An issue of precedence it appeared.




And had that thin flare rocketed him out


At the speed of light, then all there ever was,


All there’ll ever be, played in the same instant.




"If you look in the heavens for heaven,”


Jesus might have said to Didymos Judas,


“Don’t expect there to be a single star.”




But of all the spheres there is only this one


Where there is music, even if others


Are not silent they haven’t yet been tuned.




Sitting in his chair bolstered on false feet


The old pianist looks out through slatted blinds


At a melody of autumnal stars.




Too soon, as it always is and will be,


Curtains are drawn, pricks of light excluded,


And a whole life passes in a moment.




When it comes to being launched into space


Eyes shut as a reflex. Meanwhile, on earth,


A fine piano stands with its lid closed.




                                                      


Dave Alton

More from the archives of Poetry North East

Tolstoy's brother plants a green stick in the estate at Yasnaya Polyana.
It has happened before.


The woods at Yasnaya Polyana.


Eyeless leaves
rustle their neighbour's faces. Sough,
Sough. The wind. Tolstoy's brother
plants his green stick.


'If ever you find
this carved secret. Earth
will have greened a Paradise.'


Green, green.


Black men, abiding their wilderness,
scorch the defoliated, wriggling grub.


Whitely the ferry chunters us
between bays. In oiled dispersions
of wateriness we sprinkle to our rest.


The cut religious stick fades
among first plantantions. Wind heaves.
Wordlessly, it vanished, bearing
what the hand gave, of brief warmth.


O supple Paradise. Integument
prime as our mother's breats
folding milk.


The pouched marsupial intelligence,
its care, its teeth, stained with grass,
its leap to the peaceable knigdom, that,
that and no other thing, where is it?


The greening of a cut, wordless
Australasian stick. Wind lifts
like a huge leaf. Lovely questions
folitate the Pacific. 




                                                                                    Sydney 1974




Jon Silkin

Three Poems from the Archives of Poetry North East

Your Words

your words like echoes across an empty carpark,

torturing the trees that made us sleep,

     lost pines, scenting the evening

     falling secrets from your wet mouth.

your words like small whips against my back,

swaying in the dead music,

     a harmony of sour wine,

     shines, and stands up to boast.

your words like raindrops against cracked windows,

seeping quietly through my loud skull,

     the virgin and the widow within

     can only tell me of love.

your words like marching ghosts from their graves,

tearing hearts with invisible hands

     a clash of dark weapons beneath the sand,

     the smile vanishing quickly into space.

your words come and go like passing ships,

slotting into violent grey seascapes,

     impossible pathways, twisting back the head

     to see the last movement of lips.

your words

your words will live forever

     as soon as I see what you say.


                                        Paul Harland


Sunset In Chopwell Woods



The sun is balanced on the straight edge

Of a distant hill;

A filmed dancer in tip-toe pose

She collapses into herself

With slow serenity

Like a moving picture

Whose projection has slowed.



And last left

Is a curved lip of light

And the afterflow

When the audience flows

With delight to applaud

And the curtains close

On a perfect show.


                                        Wendy Zoula



Visitation (Leazes Park)



In the early chapter of a mid-winter’s day

only the bird-choirs erase

the stillness of trees.



Something moves and you consider.



With this existence evolves the judgement

of thought

after the acceptance of memory.



                                        Gordon Phillips





Demolition of Sunderland Town Hall


Such a building as you were

Demands an epitaph

As much as sealed copies of The Times,

Sovereigns and musty ideas of the future

They launched you with a century ago.

Your citizens won’t miss you,

Though you were their Hall,

To a stranger – well

It happens all the time.

Another hotel? What the hell,

We live in suitcases,

Who needs pillars?

The bells hanging from the end of a crane

Toll surprisingly deep, rhythmic, unnoticed.


                                        Michael Standen

BYKER HILL

Poems by Keith Armstrong

FIRST PUBLISHED BY IRD ARTS CLUB 1972

byker

antique mart of memory’s remnants

glad bag of fading rags

bedraggled old flag

blowing in the wind over newcastle

    

we stand on street corners shivering in the winter

like birds sheltering from the wind

we do not rattle loose change in our pockets

only the nuts and bolts of poverty

we are splinters

ill-shaven

our clothes droop on us

using our bones for hangers

we avoid mirrors and images of ourselves in shields road doorways

we do not look through windows

we draw curtains of beer across our eyes

we sleep/place bets

every week on dole day hunger prods us awake

it is instinct

it is a fear of never waking

yesterday’s records in a raby street window

yesterday’s news

revolving today

pictures of byker trapped in a camera

yesterday’s photos

developed today

yesterday’s headlines

today’s wrapping paper

yesterday’s wars are bloodless today

snot drips nose

wailing ragman drags a foot

and sniffs

any old rags

any old rags

hair like straw

homespun

snot runs

licks cracked mouth

any old rags

any old rags

as raby street

               declines

          into

water

any old rags

any old rags

watson’s toffee factory

wrapped in mist

melts in the watering mouth of the dawn

another byker child is born

another byker son assumes

the dusty jacket of a byker man 

and this is the truth

the wind-ripped reality between the grave and the womb

the aimlessness

the weary broken people

shuffling through the measured lines of architects’ reports

the cripples

the dying streets

behind the brash and snatching shops

the coughing strays

this is all the small print

the drifting words

beneath the glossy covers

and this is mother byker now

a wasteland of schools

churches public houses

a frail old woman

her mouth and eyes bricked over

tilting

on her last legs

change

creeps like a lizard over the face of byker

dragging behind it its retinue of planners

                                                wreckers 

                                                builders and

                                                    visionaries

tomorrow

you will wake from your years of sleeping

and find what you knew to be yours being hauled away

over byker bridge on the backs of lorries

your yesterday

in clouds of dust

byker folk are living still

byker folk on byker hill

fading flowers on a window sill

byker folk

                hang

                        on