CUBA, CROCODILES, RAIN

It is raining on crocodiles,
bullet-tears on the scales.
Here, where the balance of power has changed.
These banks of hardened green-backs, spread
stoned along the water’s edge,
are caged
like old dictators,
reigns ended
as young Cuba
surrounds them.





KEITH ARMSTRONG

photos: Dr Keith Armstrong

ROBERT GILCHRIST, TYNESIDE POET 1797-1844

Robert Gilchrist was born in St Mary’s Parish in Gateshead on 8th September 1797. His father was a sailmaker, part owner of Payne & Gilchrist sailmakers, before becoming head proprietor. After Robert finished school he was apprenticed to William Spence, sailmaker, before working in the family business.

Robert started writing poetry from a young age and found support in a thirving local community of poets, songsters and bards. He gained the friendship of Thomas Thompson (1773-1816), who was considered to be one of the finest and earliest Newcastle poets. Gilchrist was held in high regard. In 1818, at the age of 21, he received a silver medal from his companions in appreciation of his poetry. His special place amongst the community was recorded in the song ‘Thumping Luck to Yon Town’, by painter and politician William Watson. Watson notes Gilchrist’s “comic song” amidst the wit and humour of notable others such as Thompson and William Mitford.

A number of Gilchrist’s poems and songs were published, lending him a degree of local fame. Gilchrist's first book-length poem Gothalbert and Hisannawas published in 1822. In 1824 his Collection of Original Songs, Local and Sentimental was published by W.A. Mitchell. A second edition followed in the same year, with the title altered slightly to A Collection of Original Local Songs, and the addition of an extra poem, ‘The Loss of the Ovington’. Poems, a collection of eighty-four verses, followed in 1826 published by W. Boag. In all, Gilchrist’s published output of songs and poetry numbered over a hundred separate and original pieces, appearing in these collections and in the local press, including: The Newcastle Journal; Tyne Mercury;The Newcastle Courantand  Newcastle Magazine. Many of Gilchrist’s songs, drawn from his 1824 Collection of Original Songs, Local and Sentimental, upon which a biographer noted his fame largely rested, were republished in local anthologies in his own lifetime and beyond. These included: Fordyce's 1842 Newcastle Song Book, Joseph Robson's 1849 Songs of the Bards of the Tyne, Thomas Allan's 1862 Tyneside Songs and Readings and Joseph Crawhall’s 1888 A Beuk O’Newcassel Sangs. 

Upon the death of his father, John Gilchrist, in 1829, Robert took over his father's business near the Custom House on the Quayside. He was not successful in the business preferring the country and long walking tours. Gilchrist resided in the old house facing Shieldfield Green, reputed to have housed King Charles during the English Civil War as a prisoner of the Parliamentarians. In 1838 he wrote a poem 'The humble petition of the old house in the Shield Field' to Town Clerk Mr John Clayton Esq. complaining of plans which threatened to destroy this house. The house was spared. A memorial plaque stands on Shieldfield Green to commemorate the famous inhabitants of the house, which eventally succumbed to redevelopment in the 1960s.

Gilchrist had some involvement in local politics and must have had a degree of status in Tyneside. He was a freeman, a member of the Herbage Committee, which tended Newcastle's Town Moors, and took part in the annual Barge Day event, a local custom in which the Mayor and barges representing the Town's Guilds sailed the length of the Town Corporation's boundaries on the Tyne. Following the Poor Law Reforms of 1834 and the creation of the Newcastle-upon-Tyne Poor Law Union in September 1836, Gilchrist was elected to the Board of Guardians, representing the All Saints' Parish. This role would have meant him adjudicating between deserving and undeserving poor, deciding on the fate of unfortunate individuals and families as they entered the newly constructed Newcastle Workhouse. He was involved in an inquiry into the controversial death of the pauper Elizabeth Graham in 1838; an event which garnered national press coverage.

Robert died on 11 July 1844 at the Old House in Shieldfield, aged 47, and was buried at the East Ballast Hills burial ground. The cause of death is given as a stomach cancer. John Luke Clennell, the son of the engraver and poet Luke Clennell (1781-1840), paid tribute to his old friend in the poem below, dated 16 July 1844:

                            If honest, manly, unpretending worth
                            May justly claim from us a tribute dear,
                            And those who were respected whilst on earth,
                            Deserve a passing dirge sung o’er their bier,
                            Then may I write me ROBERT GILCHRIST here.
                            No vain and empty words are these to tell
                            A tale of sorrow in an idle rhyme;
                            I knew the simple-hearted fellow well,
                            And felt his kindness also many a time.
                            Thus it is fitting memory should dwell
                            In pensive sadness on a man who gave
                            Good cause for us to sorrow o’er his grave,
                            And that the Muse bear record with a sigh,
                            When now it is the poet’s lot to die. 

Dr Paul Gilchrist

A PRAYER FOR THE LONERS

 


 



The dejected men,
the lone voices,
slip away
in this seaside rain.
Their words shudder to a standstill
in dismal corners.
Frightened to shout,
they cower
behind quivering faces.
No one listens
to their memories crying.
There seems no point
in this democratic deficit.
For years, they just shuffle along,
hopeless
in their financial innocence.
They do have names
that no lovers pronounce.
They flit between stools,
miss out on gales of laughter.
Who cares for them?
Nobody in Whitley Bay
or canny Shields,
that’s for sure.
These wayside fellows
might as well be in a saddos’ heaven
for all it matters
in the grey world’s backwaters.
Life has bruised them,
dashed them.
Bones flake into the night.
I feel like handing them all loud hailers
to release 
their oppressed passion,
to move them
to scream
red murder at their leaders -
those they never voted for;
those who think they’re something,
some thing special,
grand.
For, in the end,
I am on the side of these stooped lamenters,
the lonely old boys with a grievance
about caring
and the uncaring;
about power,
and how switched off
this government is
from the isolated,
from the agitated,
from the trembling,
the disenfranchised
drinkers of sadness.

 


KEITH ARMSTRONG

Kenny Jobson absolutely excellent

Davide Trame This is a great, powerful poem

Libby Wattis Brilliant poem x

Gracie Gray Very evocative Keith. x

Sue Hubbard Very strong

David Henry Fantastic! A powerful and very moving poem 

Strider Marcus Jones A great poem full of so many truths.

Dominic Windram Great stuff Keith... always a vociferous voice for the voiceless! 

Siobhan Coogan Beautiful Keith you give a voice to the lonely